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iiTfiuifiiisisiflAuoiJiiOG  irtf\iSfE^(yjD 


^jpgcaMEMS  of  various  racSS  of  kaNkBnd. 


VIH.  AUSTRALIAN. 


:: i 


Ancient  E6yptian    Scribe.  V*  Dyn  —  Mariette's   Discoveries,  1852-4. 

(Louvre  Museum:) 


M.HevfrU.,j))ioto6.,Ea 


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INDIGENOUS  RACES 

OF 

THE  EARTH; 

OR, 
INCLUDING 

MONOGRAPHS   ON   SPECIAL  DEPARTMENTS  OF   PHILOLOGY,  ICONOGRAPHY, 
CRANIOSCOPY,  PALEONTOLOGY,  PATHOLOGY,  ARCHEOLOGY,  COM- 
PARATIVE GEOGRAPHY,  AND  NATURAL  HISTORY: 

CONTRIBUTED    BY 

ALFRED   MAURY, 

MBLIOTnECATRE  DE  L'lNSTITUT  DE   FRANCE;    SECRETAIRE  GENERAL  DE  LA  SOCIETE"  DE  GEOGRAPHY 

DE  PARIS;    MEMBRE  DE  LA  SOCIETE"  IMPERIALS  DES  ANTIQUAIRES  DE  FRANCE,  DES  ACADEMIES 

DE  BORDEAUX  ET  DE  CAEN,  DES  ACADEMIES  ET  SOCIETES  D'ARCHEOLOGLE  DE  BELGTQUE, 

DE  PICARDIE,  DE  MADRID,  DES  SOCIETES  ASIATIQUE  ET  MEDICO-PS  YCHOLOGIQJJE 

DE  PARIS,  DE  LA  SOCIETE"   d'HISTOIRE   DE  LA  SUISSE-ROMANDE  ET  DE  LA 

SOCIETY  DE   LITTERATURE  NEERLANDAISE  DE  LETDE;    CHEV ALTER 

DZ  L'ORDRE    DE    LA  LEGION    D'HONNEUR,   ETC.  ETC.  ETC., 

FRANCIS  PULSZKY,  and  J.  AITKEN  MEIGS,  M.D., 


OF  LVCBOCZ  AXD  CSELFALVA,  profrssor  of  the  institutes  of  medicine  in  the  Phila- 

delphia COLLEGE  OF  MEDICINE;    LIBRARIAN  OF  THE 
ACADEMY  OF  NATURAL  SCIENCES  OF  PHILADEL- 
PHIA ;     RECORDING     SECRETARY    OF     THE 
PHILADELPHIA   COUNTY  MEDICAL  SO- 
CIETY;   FELLOW    OF    THE     COL- 
LEGE OF  PHYSICIANS.  ETC. 


FELLOW  OF   THE  HUNGARIAN  ACADEMY;   COR- 
RESPONDENT  OF  THE   INSTITUTO  DI  COR- 
RL3PONDENZA  ARCHEOLOGICA   DI  RO- 
MA;   LATE    UNDER     SECRETARY 
OF  STATE  IN    HUNGARY, 
ETC.  ETC.  ETC., 


("With  Communications  from  Prof.  Jos.  Leidy,  M.  D.,  and  Prof.  L.  Agassiz,  LL.  D.) 

PRESENTING     FRESH 

INVESTIGATIONS,  DOCUMENTS,  AND  MATERIALS; 

BY 

J.  C.  NOTT,  M.D.,  and   GEO.  E.  GLIDDON, 

MOBILE,  ALABAMA,  FORMERLY  U.  S.  CONSUL   AT   CAIRO, 

AUTHORS    OP  "TYPES    OP    MANKIND." 


PHILADELPHIA  : 

J.    B .   LIPPINCOTT    &    CO 
LONDON:  TRUBNER  &  CO. 

185  7. 


(J  N  2-3 


FIRST   ENTERED  AT  STATIONERS'    HAIL,  BY  INTERNATIONAL   ARRANGEMENT   WITH  THE  AMERICAN  PROPRIETORS. 

Entered,  according  to  the  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1857,  by 

J.    B.    LIPPINCOTT    &    CO., 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Eastern  District  of 

Pennsylvania. 


TO 

RICHARD    K.   HAIGHT, 

NEW   YORK. 

I  bave  presumed  on  our  long  friendship,  and  the  associations  arising 
from  our  joint  archseological  and  ethnological  pursuits  —  as  well  as  on 
my  having  been  your  colleague  in  numerous  scientific  societies  in 
various  parts  of  the  world,  for  a  period  of  more  than  twenty  years  — 
to  dedicate  this  volume  to  you. 

G.  R.  G. 


PUBLISHERS'  ANNOUNCEMENT. 


Through  the  medium  of  a  Prospectus,  we  have  again  invited 
public  co-operation  in  bringing  out  a  second  work  on  Anthro- 
pology ;  and  it  is  with  no  slight  satisfaction  that  we  now 
publish  a  larger  list  of  Subscribers  than  even  that  received  for 
"  Types  of  Mankind." 

Such  testimonials  of  the  interest  taken  by  our  fellow-citizens 
in  scientific  researches,  are  regarded  by  ourselves,  as  they  will 
doubtless  be  by  others  both  at  home  and  abroad,  as  the  best 
evidence  of  the  love  of  knowledge  developed  in  the  United 
States  through  our  educational  institutions. 

Under  this  conviction,  we  have  endeavored  to  augment  the 
value  of  "  Indigenous  Races  of  the  Earth,"  by  sparing  neither 
exertion  nor  outlay  to  make  the  book  itself  worth}'  of  the 
patronage  bestowed  upon  it.  Whether  in  the  number  of  the 
wood-cuts  and  the  lithographic  plates,  or  as  regards  the  anjount 
of  letter-press,  it  will  be  found,  by  those  who  may  choose  to 
compare  the  promises  made  in  our  Prospectus  with  their  fulfil- 
ment in  the  present  volume,  that  we  have  really  given  much 
more  than  could  have  been  anticipated  in  a  book  the  cost  of 
which,  to  the  American  Subscriber,  is  only  Five  Dollars  per  copy. 

(v) 


VI  PUBLISHERS      ANNOUNCEMENT. 

It  is  to  this  practical  consideration  alone  that  we  appeal, 
should  criticism  allege  that  any  of  the  mechanical  part  of  this 
work  might  have  been  more  skilfully  executed.  Had  the  price 
been  higher,  the  performance  would  assuredly  have  been 
superior 

In  j  ustice  to  the  labors  of  the  Authors  and  the  Contrib  utors, 
we  will  state,  that  no  monetary  compensation  is  equal  to  the 
pains  bestowed  by  each  upon  his  part;  and  several  of  the 
above  have  kindly  furnished  their  quota  without  the  remotest 
pecuniary  object;  at  the  same  time,  let  it  be  noted,  that  the 
accomplished  lady  to  whose  single  pencil  four-fifths  of  the 
entire  series  of  illustrations  herein  contained  are  due,  sponta- 
neously volunteered,  and  for  two  years  has  employed  it,  in 
behalf  of  her  husband's  literary  interests. 

Aside,  also,  from  the  communications  made  by  Professors 
Joseph  Leidt  and  L.  Agassiz,  as  well  as  by  Lieut.  Haber- 
sham, U.  S.  N.,  the  reader  will  find  in  this  volume  several 
items  of  novelty,  —  altogether  uncontemplated  by  us  when 
the  first  Prospectus  was  issued  last  autumn. 

Among  these  may  be  mentioned  the  inedited  Eskimo-cranium 
derived  from  the  late  Dr.  Kane's  first  Arctic  Expedition,  and 
the  equally  inedited  Tclmldchi-cranium  and  portrait  presented 
by  Mr.  E.  M.  Kern,  —  artist  in  the  recent  North  Pacific  Expe- 
dition of  the  "  Vincennes,"  under  Captain  Rodgers,  U.  S.  N. 

We  hope,  therefore,  that  every  Subscriber  will  feel  satisfied 
that  we  have  fully  redeemed  our  engagements  in  the  premises. 

J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co., 

Publishers. 


PREFATORY    REMARKS. 


BY  GEO.   R.  GLIDDON. 


The  title  of  the  present  volume,  —  "Indigenous  Races  of  the 
Earth,"  as  well  as  that  of  our  former  work,  —  "Types  of  Mankind," 
are  due  to  my  colleague. 

Dr.  JSTott  possesses,  beyond  most  men,  the  faculty  of  epitomizing 
the  gist  of  an  argument  in  the  fewest  words.  It  is  on  that  account, 
and  more  especially  for  the  disappointment  readers  may  feel  upon 
finding  my  name  substituted  for  my  colleague's,  in  this  part  of  our 
joint  book,  that  its  opening  page  must  contain  an  expression  of  my 
regret  at  the  only  untoward  event  which,  from  first  to  last,  has  been 
encountered  in  the  literary  undertaking  now  brought  favorably  to 
an  end. 

Being  unavoidable,  however,  such  issue  —  unforeseen  but  a  few 
days  ago — requires  some  brief  explanation. 

On  my  return  from  Europe  last  May,  M.  Alfred  Maury's  manu- 
script for  Chapter  I.  was  the  only  part  of  this  book  in  a  state  of  com- 
pletion. Mr.  Francis  Pulszky's,  for  Chapter  II.,  arrived  in  consecu- 
tive portions  by  the  mails  from  London;  Dr.  J.  Aitken1  Meigs's,  for 
Chapter  III.,  and  mine  for  Chapters  V.  and  VI.,  were  written  here, 
during  the  past  summer  and  autumn ;  while  Dr.  I^ott,  in  the  same 
interval,  prepared  his  for  Chapter  TV.  at  Mobile. 

It  having  been  deemed  inexpedient  to  incur  the  risks  of  loss  of 
these  manuscripts  by  sending  them  hence  to  Mobile,  Dr.  ]STott,  except 
through  private  correspondence  and  my  oral  report  to  him  "  chez 
lui"  last  [November,  was  necessarily  unaccpiainted  with  their  several 
tenor :  but,  when  receiving  from  his  hands  the  manuscript  for  Chap- 

(Tii) 


Vlll  PREFATORY    REMARKS. 

ter  IV.,  I  anticipated  ho  difficulty  in  supplying  him  with  the  "proof- 
sheets"  of  our  volume  quite"  in  time  for  one — to  whom  the  subjects 
developed  in  it  are  so  familiar — to  write  the  few  pages  of  synopsis 
desirable  for  its  "Prefatory  Remarks." 

Under  this  expectation,  the  "proof-sheets"  have  been  punctually 
forwarded  hence  to  Mobile  by  our  Publishers ;  and  I  took  for  granted 
that,  by  the  15th  February,  at  furthest,  Dr.  ISTott's  second  manuscript 
would  have  reached  me  here  for  the  press.  Unfortunately,  we  have 
all  "  reckoned  without  our  host."  From  the  latter  part  of  December 
until,  I  may  say,  this  moment,  the  wintry  condition  of  the  roads  has 
been  such  as  to  compel  my  colleague  to  write  me,  almost  at  the  last 
moment,  that,  having  received  but  few  of  the  "proof-sheets,"  and 
these  in  no  connected  series,  he  must  abandou  the  hope  of  editing 
our  "Prefatory  Remarks." 

My  individual  chagrin  at  this  contre-temps  is  so  great  that  I  will  not 
attempt  to  offer  any  substitute  for  Dr.  Nott's  frustrated  intentions. 
At  a  more  propitious  time,  and  through  some  other  vehicle,  I  hope 
that  my  colleague  may  publish  his  own  commentary  upon  "  Indige- 
nous Races  of  the  Earth," — which  owes  far  more  to  his  personal 
science  and  propulsion  than  appears  on  its  face.  In  consequence, 
my  part  reduces  itself  to  the  editorship  of  three  additional  contribu- 
tions,— to  three  paragraphs  about  Egyptian  ethnography — and  to 
succinct  observations  concerning  my  own  Chapters  V.  and  VI. 

The  gratifying  communications  now  presented  afford  much  scien- 
tific novelty  and  food  for  the  reader's  reflections.  I  append  each  in 
its  order  of  date. 

"  Navy  Yard,  Philadelphia,  Jan.  20th,  1857. 
"  Messrs.  Nott  &  Gliddon, 

"Dear  Sirs: — Your  communication  in  regard  to  the  hairy  race 
who  inhabit  the  Kurile  Islands,  and  the  red  men  of  Formosa,  has 
been  received. 

"I  take  pleasure  in  forwarding  you  two  'heads '  of  the  former,  as 
drawn  by  Mr.  A.  E.  Hartman,  the  able  artist  of  the  United  States 
Survej'ing  Steamer  'John  Hancock,'  and  only  regret  that  I  am 
unable  to  furnish  you  with  similar  sketches  of  the  latter,  our  opportu- 
nities of  examining  them  having  been  very  limited.  I  take  the  fol- 
lowing extracts  in  regard  to  these  slightly  known  races  from  a  nar- 
rative of  our  Cruise  which  I  have  now  in  press : — 

"THE    KED    MEN    OF    THE    ISLAND    OF    FORMOSA. 

"  I  will  say  nothing  more  about  Formosa  for  the  present.  We  left  its  shores  about  as 
■wise  as  we  were  upon  our  arrival,  and  it  was  not  until  our  second  visit  that  we  picked  up 


PREFATORY    REMARKS.  IX 

what  little  information  now  exists  upon  the  files  of  the  Expedition  in  regard  to  it.  Upon 
leaving  Keilung  (the  port  of  the  island  of  Formosa),  for  Hong-Kong,  we  kept  along  the 
east  coast  of  the  island,  in  the  vain  search  for  a  reported  harbor.  There  was  nothing  to  be 
seen  but  an  iron-bound  coast  with  range  after  range  of  lofty  mountains  lifting  themselves 
above  the  heavy  surf  that  broke  along  the  entire  beach.  One  day  we  thought  we  had  dis- 
covered it:  we  saw  ahead  the  smoke  of  distant  villages  rising  back  of  a  bight  in  the  coast 
which  looked  very  much  like  a  harbor ;  but,  upon  approaching  it,  we  found  ourselves  mis- 
taken. We,  however,  lowered  a  boat  and  attempted  to  land,  but  the  surf  was  breaking  so 
furiously  that  it  would  have  been  madness  to  have  entered  it.  Besides,  the  beach  was 
crowded  by  naked  and  excited  savages,  who  it  was  generally  reported  were  cannibals,  and 
into  whose  company  we  should  consequently  have  preferred  being  thrown  with  reliable  arms 
in  our  hands.  The  two  convicts,  whom  the  captain  had  taken  in  the  boat  to  interpret  in 
case  of  his  being  able  to  land,  became  so  frightened  at  the  savage  appearance  of  those 
reported  man-eaters,  that  they  went  on  their  knees  to  him,  protesting,  through  the  steward, 
that  the  islanders  had  eaten  many  of  their  countrymen,  and  that  if  he  went  any  nearer  they 
would  do  the  same  by  him  and  the  boat's  crew.  Finding  it  impossible  to  pass  the  surf,  the 
boat  returned  onboard,  and  we  squared  away  for  Hong-Kong."  *  *  *  *  "And  now,  be- 
fore I  turn  to  my  journal  for  a  few  pages  in  regard  to  our  experience  while  coasting  around 
this  island,  let  me  enlighten  the  reader  as  much  as  possible  in  regard  to  it  from  other 
sources.     The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  says, — 

"  '  The  Dutch  at  an  early  period  established  a  settlement  on  this  island. 

"'In  1625,  the  viceroy  of  the  Philippine  Islands  sent  an  expedition  against  Formosa, 
with  a  view  of  expelling  the  Dutch.  It  was  unsuccessful.  .  .  .  About  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  it  afforded  a  retreat  to  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  Chinese  from  the 
fury  of  the  Tartar  conquest.  ...  In  1653,  a  conspiracy  of  the  Chinese  against  the  Dutch 
was  discovered  and  suppressed ;  and,  soon  after  this,  Coxinga,  the  governor  of  the  maritime 
Chinese  province  of  Tehichiang,  applied  for  permission  to  retire  to  the  island,  which  was 
refused  by  the  Dutch  governor ;  on  which  he  fitted  out  an  expedition,  consisting  of  six  hun- 
dred vessels,  and  made  himself  master  of  the  town  of  Formosa  and  the  adjacent  country. 
The  Dutch  were  then  allowed  to  embark  and  leave  the  island.  .  .  .  Coxinga  afterward  en- 
gaged in  a  war  with  the  Chinese  and  Dutch?  in  which  he  was  defeated  and  slain.  But  they 
were  unable  to  take  possession  of  the  island,  which  was  bravely  defended  by  the  posterity 
of  Coxinga;  and  it  was  not  till  the  year  1683  that  the  island  was  voluntarily  surrendered 
by  the  reigning  prince  to  the  Emperor  of  China.  ...  In  1805,  through  the  weakness  of 
the  Chinese  government,  the  Ladrone  pirates  had  acquired  possession  of  a  great  part  of  the 
southwest  coast.' 

"  The  Encyclopaedia  Americana  says, — 

'"The  island  is  about  two  hundred  and  forty  miles  in  length  from  north  to  south,  and 
sixty  from  east  to  west  in  its  broadest  part,  but  greatly  contracted  at  each  extremity. 
That  part  of  the  island  which  the  Chinese  possess  presents  extensive  and  fertile  plains, 
watered  by  a  great  number  of  rivulets  that  fall  from  the  eastern  mountains.  Its  air  is 
pure  and  wholesome,  and  the  earth  produces  in  abundance  corn,  rice,  and  most  other  kinds 
of  grain.  Most  of  the  India  fruits  are  found  here,  —  such  as  oranges,  bananas,  pineapples, 
guavas,  coeoanuts, — and  part  of  those  of  Europe,  particularly  peaches,  apricots,  figs,  grapes, 
chestnuts,  pomegranates,  watermelons,  &e.  Tobacco,  sugar,  pepper,  camphor,  and  cin- 
namon, are  also  common.  The  capital  of  Formosa  is  Taiouan,  —  a  name  which  the  Chi- 
nese give  to  the  whole  island.' 

"  In  addition  to  the  foregoing  extracts  from  standard  authority,  we  have  a  most,  marvel- 
lous account  of  this  island  from  the  pen  of  Mauritius  Augustus,  Count  de  Benyowsky,  a 
Polish  refugee  from  Siberian  exile,  who  visited  its  east  coast,  in  1790,  in  a  small  armed  ves- 
sel containing  about  one  hundred  men.  The  account  by  this  nobleman  is  interesting  in  the 
extreme,  but  unfortunately  he  is  guilty  of  one  gross  and  palpable  falsehood,  which  necessa- 
rily throws  a  shade  of  distrust  on  his  entire  narrative.     He  speaks  '  of  anchoring  in  several 


xu 


PREFATORY    REMARKS. 


boat  backed  into  the  surf  in  the  attempt  to  land:  he  could  only  tremble  and  cry  out,  'Dey 
eat  man!  dey  eat  man!'  His  friends  on  the  other  side  had  evidently  impressed  him  with 
that  unpleasant  national  characteristic,  and  hence  his  fright  when  apparently  about  to  be 
rolled  helplessly  to  their  feet  by  a  boiling  surf. 

"The  same  day  upon  which  we  made  this  our  last  attempt  to  land  among  them,  we 
steamed  along  up  their  coast,  keeping  as  close  as  was  prudent,  —  in  fact  closer,  — and  exa- 
mining with  our  glasses  as  far  back  as  we  could  see.  In  this  way  we  saw  small  but  appa- 
rently comfortable  stone  houses,  neatly-kept  grounds,  —  what  looked  like  fruitful  gardens 
and  green  fields, — all  being  cultivated  by  'Chinese  prisoners  who  had  not  yet  been  eaten,' 
we  were  told  on  the  other  side ;  or  rather  we  were  told  that  their  friends,  when  captured, 
were  made  to  work  until  needed  for  culinary  purposes. 

"We  were  surprised  at  this  air  of  comfort  among  half-naked  savages,  and  could  not  but 
wonder  how  they  could  have  built  such  nice-looking  houses,  until  we  finally  concluded  that 
their  prisoners  had  been  made  to  turn  their  hands  to  masonry  as  well  as  gardening.  Thus 
ended  our  second  and  last  visit  to  Formosa." 


"THE    AINU,    OR   HAIRY   KURILE. 

[See  Lieut.  Habersham's  comments,  infra,  Chapter  vi.,  pp  620-621.] 


-  '.<w    % 


"Hoping  that  the  foregoing  extracts  are  what  you  want,  I  remain, 
yours  very  truly, 

A.  W.  Habersham,  H.  S.  K" 


PREFATORY     REMARKS.  xiii 

"  Cambridge,  Feb.  1,  1857. 

"  My  dear  Sirs. — In  answer  to  your  queries  respecting  my  latest 
investigations  upon  the  question  of  the  primitive  diversity  of  the 
races  of  man,  I  have  only  a  few  general  remarks  to  make.  Most 
of  the  difficulties  which  have  been  in  the  way  of  a  more  speedy 
solution  of  that  perplexing  question,  have  arisen  from  the  circum- 
stance, that  it  has  been  considered  too  isolately,  and  without  due 
reference  to  the  progress  made  in  other  branches  of  Zoology.  I  have 
already  shown,  in  the  'Sketch  of  the  natural  provinces  of  the  animal 
world,  and  their  relation  to  the  different  types  of  man,'  which  you 
have  inserted  in  '  Types  of  Mankind,'  that,  so  far  as  their  geogra- 
phical distribution  upon  the  surface  of  the  globe  is  concerned,  the 
races  of  man  follow  the  same  laws  which  obtain  in  the  circumscrip- 
tion of  the  natural  provinces  of  the  animal  kingdom.  Even  if  this 
fact  stood  isolated,  it  would  show  how  intimately  the  plan  of  the 
animal  creation  is  linked  with  that  of  mankind.  But  this  is  not  all: 
there  are  other  features  occurring  among  animals,  which  require  the 
most  careful  consideration,  inasmuch  as  they  bear  precisely  upon  the 
question  at  issue,  whether  mankind  originated  from  one  stock,  or  from 
several  stocks,  or  by  nations.  These  features,  well  known  to  every 
zoologist,  have  led  to  as  conflicting  views  respecting  the  unity  or 
plurality  of  certain  types  of  animals,  as  are  prevailing  respecting 
the  unity  or  plurality  of  origin  of  the  human  races.  The  contro- 
versy which  has  been  carried  on  among  zoologists,  upon  this  point, 
shows  that  the  difficulties  respecting  the  races  of  men  are  not  pecu- 
liar to  the  question  of  man,  but  involve  the  investigation  of  the 
whole  animal  kingdom — though,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  they 
have  always  been  considered  without  the  least  reference  to  one 
another. 

"  I  need  not  extend  my  remarks  beyond  the  class  to  which  man 
himself  belongs,  in  order  to  show  how  much  light  might  be  derived, 
for  the  study  of  the  races,  from  a  careful  comparison  of  their  pecu- 
liar characteristics  with  those  of  animals.  The  monkeys  most  nearly 
allied  to  man  afford  even  the  best  examples.  The  orang-outans  of 
Borneo,  Java,  and  Sumatra,  are  considered  by  some  of  the  most 
eminent  zoologists  as  constituting  only  one  single  species.  This  is 
the  opinion  of  Andreas  "Wagner,  who,  by  universal  consent,  ranks 
as  one  of  the  highest  authorities  in  questions  relating  to  the  natural 
history  of  mammalia;  while  Richard  Owen,  than  whom  no  man, 
with  the  exception  of  our  own  Jeffreys  Wyman,  has  studied  more 
carefully  the  anthropoid  monkeys,  considers  them  as  belonging  to 
at  least  three  distinct  species.  A  comparison  of  the  full  and  beau- 
tifully illustrated  descriptions  which  Owen  has  published,   of  the 


XIV  PREFATORY    REMARKS. 

skeleton  and  especially  of  the  skulls  of  these  species  of  orangs,  with 
the  descriptions  and  illustrations  of  the  different  races  of  man,  to  be 
found  in  almost  every  work  on  this  subject,  shows  that  the  orange 
differ  from  one  another  in  the  same  manner  as  the  races  of  man  do; 
so  much  so,  that,  if  these  orangs  are  different  species,  the  different 
races  of  men  which  inhabit  the  same  countries,  the  Malays  and  the 
Negrillos,  must  be  considered  also  as  distinct  species.  This  conclu- 
sion acquires  still  greater  strength,  if  we  extend  the  comparison  to 
the  long-armed  monkeys,  the  Hylobates  of  the  Sunda  islands  and 
of  the  peninsulas  of  Malacca  and  Deckan,  which  extend  over  regions 
inhabited  by  the  Teli  ngans,  the  Malays,  and  the  Negrillos ;  for  there 
exists  even  a  greater  diversity  of  opinions  among  zoologists  respect- 
ing the  natural  limits  of  the  species  of  the  genus  Hylobates,  than 
respecting  those  of  the  orangs,  which  constitute  the  genus  Pithecus. 
I  have  already  alluded,  on  another  occasion,  to  the  identity  of  color 
of  the  Malays  and  orangs :  may  we  not  now  remember,  also,  a 
similar  resemblance  between  some  of  the  species  of  Hylobates  with 
the  Negrillos  and  Telingans  ? 

"  The  monkeys  of  South  America  are  also  very  instructive  in  this 
respect,  especially  the  genus  Cebus.  "While  some  zoologists  distin- 
guish as  many  as  ten  different  species,  others  consider  them  all  as 
one,  and  others  acknowledge  two  or  three  species.  Here  we  have 
again,  with  reference  to  one  genus  of  monkeys,  the  same  diversity 
of  opinion  as  exists  among  naturalists  respecting  the  races  of  man. 
But,  in  this  ease,  the  question  assumes  a  peculiar  interest,  from  the 
circumstance  that  the  genus  Cebus  is  exclusively  American ;  for  that 
discloses  the  same  indefinite  limitation  between  its  species  which 
we  observe  also  among  the  tribes  of  Indians,  or  the  same  tendency 
to  splitting  into  minor  groups,  running  really  one  into  the  other, 
notwithstanding  some  few  marked  differences,  —  in  the  same 
manner,  as  Morton  has  shown,  that  all  the  Indians  constitute  but 
one  race,  from  one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other.  This  differen- 
tiation of  our  animals  into  an  almost  indefinite  number  of  varieties, 
in  species  which  have,  as  a  whole,  a  wide  geographical  distribution, 
is  a  feature  which  prevails  very  extensively  upon  the  two  continents 
of  America.  It  may  be  observed  among  our  squirrels,  our  rabbits 
and  hares,  our  turtles,  and  even  among  our  fishes ;  while,  in  the  Old 
World,  notwithstanding  the  recurrence  of  similar  phenomena,  the 
range  of  variation  of  species  seems  less  extensive  and  the  range  of 
their  geographical  distribution  more  limited.  In  accordance  with 
this  general  character  of  the  animal  kingdom,  we  find  likewise  that, 
among  men,  with  the  exception  of  the  Arctic  Esquimaux,  there  is 
only  one  single  race  of  men  extending  over  the  whole  range  of 


PREFATORY     REMARKS.  XV 

ISorth  and  South  America,  but  dividing  into  innumerable  tribes ; 
whilst,  in  the  Old  World,  there  are  a  great  many  well-defined  and 
easily  distinguished  races,  which  are  circumscribed  within  compara- 
tively much  narrower  boundaries. 

"  This  being  the  case,  is  it  not  plain  that,  unless  we  compare  con- 
stantly the  results  of  our  ethnological  investigations  with  the  daily 
increasing  information  we  possess  respecting  the  relations  of  animals 
to  one  another  and  their  geographical  distribution,  light  will  never 
shine  upon  the  question  of  the  races  of  man  ? 

"  There  is  another  point  to  which  I  would  simply  allude.  Much 
importance  is  attached  to  the  affinity  of  languages — by  those  who 
insist  upon  the  primitive  unity  of  man — as  exhibiting,  in  their 
opinion,  the  necessity  of  a  direct  affiliation  between  all  men.  But 
the  very  same  thing  might  be  shown  of  any  natural  family  of  ani- 
mals,— even  of  such  families  as  contain  a  large  number  of  distinct 
genera  and  species.  Let  any  one  follow  upon  a  map  exhibiting  the 
geographical  distribution  of  the  bears,  the  cats,  the  hollow-horned 
ruminants,  the  gallinaceous  birds,  the  ducks,  or  of  any  other  families, 
and  he  may  trace,  as  satisfactorily  as  any  philological  evidence  can 
prove  it  for  the  human  language,  and  upon  a  much  larger  scale,  that 
the  brumming  of  the  bears  of  Kamtschatka  is  akin  to  that  of  the 
bears  of  Thibet,  of  the  East  Indies,  of  the  Sunda  islands,  of  Nepal, 
of  Syria,  of  Europe,  of  Siberia,  of  the  United  States,  of  the  Rocky 
mountains,  and  of  the  Andes ;  though  all  these  bears  are  considered 
as  distinct  species,  who  have  not  any  more  inherited  their  voice  one 
from  the  other,  than  the  different  races  of  men.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  roaring  and  miawing  of  the  cats  of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa, 
and  America ;  or  of  the  lowing  of  the  bulls,  the  species  of  which 
are  so  widely  distributed  nearly  over  the  whole  globe.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  gackeling  of  the  gallinaceous  birds,  and  of  the  quacking  of 
the  ducks,  as  well  as  of  the  song  of  the  thrushes, — all  of  which  pour 
forth  their  gay  and  harmonious  notes  in  a  distinct  and  independent 
dialect,  neither  derived  nor  inherited  one  from  the  other,  even  though 
all  sing  thrushes^.  Let  any  philologist  study  these  facts,  and  learn,  at 
the  same  time,  how  independent  the  animals  are,  one  from  the  other, 
which  utter  such  closely  allied  systems  of  intonations,  and,  if  he  be 
not  altogether  blind  to  the  significance  of  analogies  in  nature,  he 
must  begin  himself  to  question  the  reliability  of  philological  evi- 
dence as  proving  genetic  derivation. 

"Ls.  Agassiz." 
Messes.  Nott  &  Gliddon. 


XVI  PREFATORY     REMARKS. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  10th,  1857. 
Dr.  ISTott  and  Mr.  Gliddon, 

Dear  Sirs : — Yon  have  frequently  expressed  the  desire  that  I  should 
give  to  you  a  Chapter  on  some  ethnographic  subject,  which  I  would 
gladly  have  done  had  I  made  Ethnography  an  especial  study.  After 
the  death  of  Dr.  Morton,  it  was  proposed  to  me  to  take  up  the  inves- 
tigation of  the  cranial  characteristics  of  the  human  races,  where  he 
had  left  it,  which  I  omitted,  not  from  a  want  of  interest  in  ethnogra- 
phic science,  hut  because  other  studies  occupied  my  time.  Having, 
as  curator  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  the  charge  of  Dr.  Mor- 
ton's extensive  cabinet  of  human  crania,  I  confided  the  undertaking 
to  Dr.  Meigs,  who  has  shown  his  capability  for  investigating  the  intri- 
cate subject  of  Ethnography  in  the  excellent  Chapter  he  presents 
as  a  contribution  to  your  work.  To  the  paper  of  Dr.  Meigs  it  was 
proposed  that  I  should  add  notes;  but  after  a  diligent  perusal  it 
appeared  to  me  so  complete,  that  I  think  I  could  not  add  anything 
to  enhance  its  value. 

While  engaged  in  palseontological  researches,  I  sought  for  earlier 
records  of  the  aboriginal  races  of  man  than  have  reached  us  through 
vague  traditions  or  through  later  authentic  history,  but  without  being 
able  to  discover  any  positive  evidences  of  the  exact  geological  period 
of  the  advent  of  man  in  the  fauna  of  the  earth. 

The  numerous  facts  which  have  been  brought  to  our  notice  touch- 
ing the  discovery  of  human  bones,  and  rude  implements  of  art,  in 
association  with  the  remains  of  animals  of  the  earlier  pliocene 
deposits,  are  not  conclusive  evidence  of  their  contemporaneous 
existence. 

It  is  not  from  the  land  of  their  birth,  and  upon  which  they  moved 
and  died,  that  we  learn  the  history  of  lost  races  of  terrestrial  animals; 
it  is  in  the  beds  of  lakes  and  inland  seas,  and  in  the  deltas  of  rivers, 
at  the  boundaries  of  their  habitation.  In  reflecting  upon  the  present 
condition  of  the  habitable  earth,  with  its  teeming  population  and  the 
rapid  succession  of  births  and  deaths,  we  might  be  led  to  suppose 
the  surface  of  the  earth  had  become  thickly  strewn  with  the  remains 
of  animals.  It  is,  however,  no  less  true  than  astonishing,  that,  with 
comparatively  trifling  exceptions,  the  remains  of  each  generation  of 
animals  are  completely  obliterated.  Penetrate  the  forests,  traverse 
the  prairies,  and  explore  the  mountain  chains  and  valleys  of  America, 
and  seek  for  the  bones  of  the  generations  of  red-men,  of  the  herds  of 
bison,  and  of  other  animals,  which  have  lived  and  died  in  past  ages. 
.Neither  upon  nor  beneath  the  surface  of  the  earth  are  they  to  be 


PREFATORY     REMARKS.  XVU 

found ;  for  devouring  successors,  and  the  combined  influence  of  air 
and  moisture,  have  completely  extinguished  their  traces.  An  occa- 
sional swollen  carcase,  borne  by  a  river  current,  and  escaping  the 
jaws  of  crocodiles  and  fishes,  leaves  its  remains  in  the  bed  of  a  lake, 
or  in  a  delta,  to  represent  in  future  time  the  era  of  its  existence. 

Since  the  Glacial  Period,  or  rather  since  tbe  subsequent  emergence 
of  the  northern  zones  of  America  and  Europe  from  the  Great  Arctic 
Ocean,  the  general  configuration  of  the  continents  bas  remained 
nearly  unchanged  down  to  the  present  time.  In  consequence  of 
this  circumstance  tbe  deposits  or  geological  formations  in  which  we 
could  most  advantageously  study  the  earliest  traces  of  primitive 
man,  are,  in  the  greatest  degree,  inaccessible  to  our  investigations. 
These  deposits  are  the  beds  of  modern  lakes  and  inland  seas,  and 
fluviatile  accumulations  or  deltas.  Marshes,  in  many  instances, 
have  served  as  the  depository  of  the  larger  quadrupeds,  which  have 
perished  in  the  mire  ;  but  these  are  places  in  which  the  remains  of 
man  would  be  rarely  found,  because  they  are  naturally  avoided. 

Coeval,  perhaps,  with  the  Glacial  Period  of  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere, which  at  the  present  time  exhibits  its  similitude  in  the 
Great  Antarctic  Ocean,  primitive  races  of  man  may  have  already 
inhabited  the  intertropical  regions ;  and  in  the  gradual  emergence 
of  the  northern  zones  of  the  earth  he  may  have  followed  the  receding 
waters — traditions  of  which,  in  after  ages,  when  conjoined  with  the 
view  of  the  accumulations  of  drift  material,  may  have  given  rise  to 
the  idea  of  a  universal  deluge,  which  appears  to  have  prevailed 
among  the  aborigines  of  the  western  as  well  as  of  the  eastern  world. 

No  satisfactory  evidence  has  been  adduced  in  favor  of  this  early 
appearance  of  man  ;  but  I  am  strongly  inclined  to  suspect  that  such 
evidence  will  yet  be  discovered. 

Many  animals,  which  we  may  infer  to  have  existed  in  association 
with  the  Mastodon  and  Megalonyx,  have  so  thoroughly  disappeared 
from  the  face  of  nature  that  no  trace  of  them  is  to  be  discovered. 
Near  Natchez,  Mississippi,  there  have  been  found  together  in  the 
same  deposit,  the  remains  of  the  Elephant,  Mastodon,  Mylodon, 
Megalonyx,  Ereptodon,  Bison,  Cervus,  Equus,  Ursus,  Canis,  the 
lower  jaw  of  a  lion,  and  the  hip  bone  of  a  man.  All  the  bones  are 
infiltrated  with  peroxide  of  iron,  and  present  the  same  appearance. 
The  lower  jaw  of  the  lion,  the  type  of  the  Felis  atrox,  is  the  only 
relic  of  the  species  yet  discovered,  though  the  animal  most  probably 
at  one  period  ranged  America  as  freely  and  for  as  long  a  time  as  its 
present  congener  of  Africa  and  Asia.  The  human  hip-bone  alluded 
to,  has  been  supposed  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell  to  have  been  subsequently 
2 


XVlii  PREFATORY     REMARKS. 

introduced  among  the  remains  of  the  other  animals  mentioned ;  and 
this  supposition  I  deem  highly  probable,  although  the  bone  does 
present  the  same  appearance  as  the  others  with  which  it  was  found.1 
We  cannot,  however,  positively  deny  that  it  was  contemporaneous 
with  those  of  the  extinct  animals. 

When  America  was  discovered  by  Europeans  it  was  thickly  popu- 
lated by  a  race  of  man,  which  appears  already  to  have  existed  for 
many  ages,  and  it  is  quite  as  probable  that  he  had  his  origin  on  this 
continent  as  that  men  originated  elsewhere;2  and  further,  it  is 
probable  that  the  Red-man  witnessed  the  declining  existence  of 
the  Mastodon  and  Megalonyx,  in  the  later  ages  of  the  glacial 
period. 

The  early  existence  of  the  genera  to  which  our  domestic  animals 
belong,  has  been  adduced  as  presumptive  evidence  of  the  advent  of 
man  at  a  more  remote  period  than  is  usually  assigned.  It  must  be 
remembered,  however,  even  at  the  present  time,  that  of  some  of 
these  genera  only  a  few  species  are  domesticated:  thus  of  the  exist- 
ing six  species  of  Equus,  only  two  have  ever  been  freely  brought 
under  the  dominion  of  man. 

The  horse  did  not  exist  in  America  at  the  time  of  its  discovery  by 
Europeans;  but  its  remains,  consisting  chiefly  of  molar  teeth,  have 
now  been  so  frequently  found  in  association  with  those  of  extinct 
animals,  that  it  is  generally  admitted  once  to  have  been  an  aborigi- 
nal inhabitant.  When  I  first  saw  examples  of  these  remains  I  was 
not   disposed  to   view  them  as   relics  of  an   extinct   species;   for 

1  Bones  of  recent  animals,  when  introduced  into  older  deposits,  may  in  many  cases  very 
soon  assume  the  condition  of  the  fossils  belonging  to  those  deposits.  Fossilisation,  petri- 
faction, or  lapidification,  is  no  positive  indication  of  the  relative  age  of  organic  remains. 
The  miocene  vertebrate  remains  of  the  Himalayas  are  far  more  completely  fossilised  than 
the  like  remains  of  the  eocene  deposits  of  the  Paris  basin;  and  the  remains  of  the  tertiary 
vertebrata  of  Nebraska  are  more  fossilized  than  those  of  the  secondary  deposits  beneath. 
The  Cabinet  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadelphia  contains  bones  of  the 
Megalonyx  and  of  the  extinct  peccary,  that  are  entirely  unchanged ;  not  a  particle  of  gelatin 
has  been  lost,  nor  a  particle  of  mineral  matter  added,  and  indeed  some  of  the  bones  of  the 
former  even  have  portions  of  articular  cartilage  and  tendinous  attachments  well  preserved. 

2  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  man  (strictly  the  genus  Homo)  may  have  first  originated 
in  central  Asia.  When  we  reflect  upon  the  gradual  advance  in  intelligence  in  the  scale  of 
living  beings,  through  successive  geological  periods,  may  we  not  infer  that  the  apparently 
earlier  civilization  of  the  human  race  in  Asia  is  indicative  of  its  earliest  advent  in  that 
portion  of  the  world  ?  Various  races  of  man,  in  different  geographical  positions,  may  have 
acquired  their  peculiar  characteristics  (their  specific  origin)  at  successive  periods  long  dis- 
tant from  each  other.  Perhaps  when  the  aboriginal  progenitors  of  the  civilized  Mexicans 
and  Peruvians  roamed  as  savage  hordes  through  intertropical  America,  the  great  Arctic 
Ocean  yet  concealed  the  present  northern  United  States  in  its  depths,  and  Asiatic  civiliza- 
tion was  then  just  dawning  from  ages  of  night. 


PREFATORY     REMARKS.  XIX 

although  some  presented  characteristic  differences  from  those  of  pre- 
viously known  species,  others  were  undistinguishahle  from  the  cor- 
responding parts  of  the  domestic  horse,  and  among  them  were 
intermediate  varieties  of  form  and  size.  The  subsequent  discovery 
of  the  remains  of  two  species  of  the  closely  allied  extinct  genus 
Hipparion,  in  addition  to  the  discovery  of  remains  of  two  extinct 
equine  genera  (Anchitherium  and  Merychippus)  of  an  earlier  geolo- 
gical period,  leaves  no  room  to  doubt  the  former  existence  of  the 
horse  on  the  American  continent,  contemporaneously  with  the  Mas- 
todon and  Megalonyx ;  and  man  probably  was  his  companion. 

Some 'time  since,  Prof.  F.  S.  Holmes,  of  Charleston,  submitted 
for  my  examination  a  collection  of  fossil  bones  from  a  post-pleiocene 
deposit  on  Ashley  River,  S.  C.  Among  remains  of  the  extinct  horse, 
the  peccary,  Mylodon,  Megatherium,  Mastodon,  Hipparion,  the  tapir, 
the  capybara,  the  beaver,  the  musk-rat,  &c,  were  some  which  I  con- 
sidered as  belonging  to  the  dog,  the  domestic  ox,  the  sheep  and  the 
hog.  Prof.  Holmes  observes  that  these  remains  were  taken  from  an 
extensive  deposit,  in  which  similar  ones  exist  abundantly;  and  he 
further  adds,  that  he  cannot  conceive  that  the  latter  should  have 
become  mingled  with  the  former  since  the  introduction  of  domestic 
animals  into  America  by  Europeans.  It  is  not  improbable  that  the 
American  continent  once  had,  as  part  of  its  fauna,  representatives 
of  our  domestic  animals  which  subsequently  became  extinct- — though 
I  am  inclined  to  doubt  it ;  but  what  we  have  learned  of  the  extinct 
American  horse  will  lead  me  carefully  to  investigate  the  subject. 

My  letter  is  much  extended  beyond  what  I  designed,  but  I  hope  its 
facts  and  suggestions  will  have  sufficient  interest  with  you  to  relieve 
its  tediousness. 

I  remain  with  respect, 

at  your  further  service, 

Joseph  Leidy. 

Mr.  Pulszky  {infra,  Chapter  H.,  p.  109)  has  referred  to  Dr.  JSTott's 
experienced  consideration  some  very  interesting  points  of  Egyptian 
ethnology,  based  upon  fresher  discoveries  than  any  with  which  we 
were  acquainted  on  the  publication  of  our  last  work  in  1854.  I 
have  no  wish  to  interfere  with  the  latter's  specialty  of  research,  in 
which  I  trust  the  future  may  rank  me  also  among  the  taught:  but, 
taking  for  granted  that  the  reader  can  verify  accuracy  in  Egyptolo- 
gical works  (abundantly  cited  in  this  as  in  our  preceding  publica- 
tion), I  may  here  sketch  some  archaeological  facts  as  preliminary 
headings  for  my  colleague's  elaboration  hereafter,  —  being  general 
results  in  which  he  and  myself  coincide.  • 


XX  PEEFATORT    REMARKS. 

The  Egyptians,  eldest  historical  branch  of  the  Hamitic  group  of 
races,  now  appear  to  science  as  terrse  geniti,  or  autochthones,  of  the 
lower  valley  of  the  Nile, — and  this,  of  course,  from  a  period  incalcu- 
lably beyond  all  "chronology."  Upon  them,  at  a  secondary  phase 
of  the  existence  of  the  former,  but  prior  even  to  the  erection  of  the 
earliest  pyramid  of  the  Hid  Dynasty,  Semitic  races  by  degrees 
became  infiltrated  and,  at  a  later  period — XlTth  to  XXIId  Dynasties 
— superposed.  From  about  the  twenty-second  century  b.  c,  down  to 
the  seventh,  Hyksos  invasions,  Israelitish  sojourn,  Phoenician  com- 
merce, Assyrian  and  Babylonish  relations,  greatly  Semitieized  the 
people ;  at  the  same  time  that  frequent  intermarriages  of  the  phara- 
onic  and  hierogrammatic  families  with  princesses  and  noblesse  of  the 
Semitic  stock  in  Palestine,  Arabia,  Syria,  and  Mesopotamia,  mate- 
rially affected  the  original  type  of  the  ruling  class  of  Egyptians. 
About  b.  c.  650,  Psammetichus  I.,  by  throwing  open  the  army  and 
the  ports  of  Egypt  to  the  Greeks,  introduced  a  third  element  of 
amalgamation,  viz :  the  Indo-European  ;  which  received  still  stronger 
impetus  after  Cambyses  (b.  c.  525)  and  his  successors  held  Egypt 
prostrate  under  Arian  subjection.  Alexander  (b.  c.  332),  and  the 
Ptolemies,  then  overwhelmed  Lower  Egypt  with  Macedonians  and 
other  Grecians ;  C^sar  (b.  c.  39-30),  and  the  Roman  emperors,  in- 
jected streams  of  Indo-Germanic,  Celtic,  and  some  Sarmatian  blood, 
through  legionaries  drawn  even  from  Britannia  et  Dacia  antiquse, 
into  the  already-altered  Egyptian  veins.  Lastly,  b.  c.  641,  Arabia 
sent  her  wild  dromedary-riders  along  the  Nile  from  its  mouths  to  its 
Abyssinian  sources. 

Now,  at  this  period  of  Egyptian  life,  about  twelve  centuries  ago, 
no  population,  in  the  world  perhaps,  had  undergone  such  transforma- 
tions (individually  speaking)  of  type  as  had  these  Hamites  through 
Semitic  and  Indo-European  amalgamation  with  their  females, — never 
famous  for  continence  at  any  time.  Besides,  a  certain  but  really 
infinitesimal  and  ephemeral  quantum  of  Ethiopian  and  Nigritian 
blood  had,  through  importation  of  concubines,  all  along,  from  the 
XHth  Dynasty,  been  flowing  in  upon  this  corrupted  mass  from  the 
south.  Preceded,  under  the  Khalifates,  by  occasional  Turanian 
captives ;  increased  during  the  period  of  the  "  Ghuz  "  through  contact 
with  the  Mongolian  offshoots  of  Hulagou;  and  stimulated  daily  by 
fresh  accessions  of  "Caucasian"  Memhoks, — the  Ottomans,  about 
a.  d.  1517,  commenced  despoiling  the  fairest  land  amidst  all  those 
doomed  to  their  now-evanescent  dominion.  But,  —  and  here  is  the 
new  point  in  ethnology  to  which  the  reader's  attention  is  solicited — * 
from  and  after  the  era  of  the  Saracenic  conquest,  a  revulsion  in  the 
order  of  these  conflicting  amalgamations  began  to  take  effect.     On 


PREFATORY     REMARKS.  XXI 

the  advent  of  Islam  and  its  institutions,  which  were  received  with 
rapture  by  the  Egyptian  masses,  unions  between  the  Mohammedan- 
ized  Fellah  women  and  any  males  but  Mussulmans  became  unlawful. 
It  will  also  be  noted,  too,  that  neither  the  "  Caucasian"  Memlooks, 
nor  the  Turanian  Turks,  could  or  can  raise  hybrid  offspring  (perma- 
nent, I  mean  to  say),  in  Egypt:  and  again,  that  all  these  importations 
of  foreign  rulers,  since  the  time  of  Cambyses,  consisted  in  soldiery, — 
very  disproportionate  in  numerical  amount  to  the  gross  bulk  of  the 
indigenous  agricultural  population. 

Hence,  under  Islamism,  the  people  began  to  pause,  as  regards 
any  important  effects,  in  this  promiscuous  intermixture  with  alien 
races;  except  (in  cities  chiefly)  with  their  congeners  the  Arabs. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  among  the  decaying  mongrels  termed 
"Copts"  (Christian  Jacobites)  —  no  Muslim  law  forbidding  their 
intercourse  with  any  nation  —  the  action  of  hybridity  has  never 
stopped  from  that  day  to  this:  which  is  the  simple  rationale  of  the 
discrepant  accounts  of  tourists  in  respect  to  the  multiform  varieties 
beheld  in  this  small  section  of  the  Egyptians.  Now,  from  the  com- 
mencement of  that  pause,  in  the  7th  century  of  our  era,  down  to 
the  present  time,  some  thirty-six  generations  have  elapsed ;  during 
which  the  Muslim  peasant  population  —  that  is,  between  two  and 
three  millions  —  intermarrying  among  themselves,  have  really  ab- 
sorbed, or  thrown  off,  those  alien  elements  previously  injected  into 
their  blood,  —  and  thus,  the  Fellahs  of  the  present  day  have,  to  an 
amazing  degree,  and  after  some  fifty  centuries,  actually  recovered 
the  type  of  the  old  IVth  dynasty.  Indeed,  one  might  almost  assert 
that,  from  blank  centuries  before  Christ  down  to  the  XlXth  century 
after,  the  greatest  changes  which  time  has  wrought  upon  the  bulk 
of  the  indigenous  Egyptian  race  reduce  themselves,  —  in  religion,  to 
Mohammed  for  Osiris ;  in  language,  to  Semitic  for  Hamitic ;  in  insti- 
tutions, to  the  musket  for  the  bow;  but,  in  blood,  to  little  if  any. 
See  again  Mr.  Pulszky's  Chapter  (I,  pp.  107-122),  and  our  plates 
(I  and  II,  infra). 

One  word  more,  as  concerns  my  individual  contributions  in 
Chapters  V  and  VI. 

With  the  exception  of  Chapter  m,  which  Dr.  Meigs  has  been  so 
good  as  to  revise  himself,  the  entire  labor  of  editorship  has  fallen 
upon  me ;  and,  as  an  inevitable  consequence,  I  have  not  had  the 
time,  even  supposing  possession  of  the  ability,  to  bestow  upon  my 
own  contributions  the  verbal  criticism  they  might,  otherwise,  have 
received.  Furthermore,  apart  from  a  few  pages  of  my  manuscripts 
regarding  the  natural  history  of  monkeys  submitted  last  summer  to 
the  obliging  perusal  of  my  friends,  Prof.  Leidy  and  Dr.  Meigs,  I 


XXU  PREFATORY    REMARKS. 

have  neither  consulted  anybody  as  to  the  subjects  upon  which  I 
proposed  to  treat,  nor  has  any  one  seen  the  "revises"  until  the 
plates  were  stereotyped.  Consequently,  for  whatever  I  may  have 
written,  with  a  free  pen  and  open  utterance,  no  person  but  myself  is 
responsible. 

If  the  reader  will  complaisantly  bear  in  mind  that  the  Chapters, 
severally  chosen  by  my  colleague  Dr.  Nott,  and  our  collaborators, 
had  already  covered  a  vast  range  of  "Ethnological  Inquiry," — upon 
which,  whether  acquainted  with  the  themes  or  not,  delicacy  forbade 
my  trenching — he  will  perceive  the  reason  why,  under  the  caption 
of  "the  Monogenists  and  the  Polygenists,"  I  have  endeavored  to 
fill  up  some  gaps  in  what  I  deem  to  be  ethnographical  desiderata. 
Such  as  these  facts  or  deductions  of  my  own  may  be,  I  submit  them 
unreservedly  to  public  criticism;  at  the  same  time  that,  although  not 
advanced  with  indifference  to  either,  they  must  take  their  chance, 
without  courting  approbation,  or  deprecating  blame. 

G.  R.  G. 

Philadelphia,  20th  Feb.,  1857. 


CONTENTS. 


Paoe 

PREFATORY  REMARKS  —  by  Geo.  R.  Gliddon vii 

LETTER  FROM  LIEUT.  A.  "W.  HABERSHAM,  U.  S.  N.,  (with  1  wood-cut)  . .    viii 

LETTER  FROM  PROF.  L.  AGASSIZ xiii 

LETTER  FROM  PROF.  JOSEPH  LEIDY xvi 

Chap.  I.  —  On  the  Distribution  and  Classification  of  Tongues,  —  their  rela- 
tion to  the  Geographical  Distribution  of  Races  ;  and  on  the 
inductions  which  may  be  drawn  from  these  relations — by 
Alfred  Maury 25 

II. ICONOGRAPHIC     RESEARCHES    ON    HUMAN    RACES    AND     THEIR    Art BY 

Francis  Pulszky,  [with  98  wood-cuts  and  IX  lithographic  Plates, 

3  colored) 87 

III.  —  The  Cranial  Characteristics  of  the  Races  of  Men  —  by  J.  Aitken 

Meigs,  [with  87  wood-cuts.) 203 

IV.  —  Acclimation;  or,  the  comparative  influence  of  Climate,  Endemic 

and  Epidemic  Diseases,  on  the  Races  of  Men  —  by  J.  C.  Nott.  .  .   353 

V.  —  The  Monogenists  and  the  Polygenists  ;  being  an  exposition  of  the 
doctrines  of  schools  professing  to  sustain  dogmatically  the 
Unity  or  the  Diversity  of  Human  Races;  with  an  inquiry  into 
the  Antiquity  of  Mankind  upon  Earth,  viewed  Chronologically, 
Historically  and  Pal^eontologically —  by  Geo.  R.  Gliddon, 
(with  4  wood-cuts.) 402 

VI.  —  Section  I.  —  Commentary  upon  the  principal  distinctions  observ- 
able among  the  Various  Groups  of  Humanity — (with  a  tinted  litho- 
graphic Tableau  containing  54  human  portraits.) 603 

Section  II.  —  On  the  Geographical  Distribution  of  the  Simile  in 
relation  to  that  of  some  inferior  Types  of  Men  (with  a  tinted 
Map  containing  54  Monkeys  and  6  human  portraits)  —  by  Geo.  R. 

Gliddon 638 

(xxiii) 


LITHOGRAPHIC   PLATES. 


Page  — Explanations. 
Plate  I.  —  Frontispiece,  colored.     "Ancient  Egyptian  Scribe.     Vth  Dynasty. — 

Mariette's  Discoveries,  1852-4,"  (Louvre  Museum.) Ill 

II.  —  Fig.  1.  "Ancient  Scribe  (ante,  PI.  I)— Profile."— Fig.  2.  "  Same  head 

altered  into  a  modern  Fellith." Ill 

III.-Fig.  1.  "Sepa."     )     (Louvre  Museum) 110 

Fig.  2.  "  Nesa."     j     l  ' 

IV.  —  "Skhem-ka,"  (Louvre  Museum) 110 

V.  —  Fie.  1.  "  Pahou-er-nowre."   '       1     ,T            ^            N  ,,„ 

„°  „       _, ,        ,         „    „,    „    >    (Louvre  Museum) 110 

Fig.  2.  "  Skhem-ka.     Profile."    j  ' 

VI.  — Egyptian  head  (Louvre  Museum) Ill 

VII.  —  "Men-ka-her  —  Vth  Dynasty,"  (Louvre  Museum) 112 

VIII.  —  Fig.  1.  "Aahmes-nofre-ari."  }    IT>    ,.     M            >    f 116 

„6           „  .                           >   (Berlin  Museum)   -j  ,,„ 

Fig.  2.  "  Nefer-hetep  I."       j    v                            '    \ 113 

IX.  -  Fig.  1.  "  Etruscan  Vase."                            |    (BritiBh  Museum) 190 

Figs.  2,  3,  4.  "  Etruscan  drinkmg-jars.      ) 

Ethnographic  Tableau.  —  "  Specimens  of  Various  Races  of  Mankind." 618 

Chart.  —  "Illustrative  of  the  Geographical  distribution   of  Monkeys,  in  their 

relation  to  that  of  some  inferior  Types  of  Men." 641 


(xxiv) 


INDIGENOUS    RACES 


THE    EAETH. 


CHAPTER   I. 

ON   THE    DISTRIBUTION   AND    CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES, THEIR    RELA- 
TION   TO    THE    GEOGRAPHICAL    DISTRIBUTION    OF    RACES  J    AND    ON  THE 
INDUCTIONS  WHICH   MAT  BE   DRAWN   FROM   THESE   RELATIONS. 

BY   ALFRED   MAURY, 

Librarian  of  the  French  Imperial  Institute,  Secretary-General  of  the 

80CIETE    DE    GEOGKAPHIE    I)E    PARIS. 


[COMMUNICATED  TO  DR.  NOTT  AND  MR.  GLIDDON.] 


SECTION  I. 


Authors  who  have  occupied  themselves  with  the  comparison  of 
languages  have  been  inclined  sometimes  not  to  distinguish,  in  the 
grammar,  that  which  belongs  to  the  very  constitution  of  speech  (itself 
nothing  else  than  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind),  and  that 
which  appertains  to  such  or  to  such  another  given  form  of  utterance. 
It  is  here,  however,  that  an  important  distinction  should  be  made : 
because,  if  the  difference  between  generic  and  specific  characters  be 
not  perceived,  a  man  is  incapable  of  analysis ;  and  instead  of  making 
a  classification  he  loses  himself  in  a  synthesis  vague  and  indefinite. 

Languages  are  organisms  that  are  all  conceived  upon  the  same 
plan, — one  might  almost  say,  upon  the  same  skeleton,  which,  in  their 
development  and  their  composition,  follow  fixed  laws :  inasmuch  as 
these  laws  are  the  consequence  of  this  organism  itself.  But,  along- 
side of  this  identity  in  the  procedure,  each  family  of  tongues  has  its 
own  special  evolution,  and  its  own  destinies.    They  all  possess  among 

(25) 


26  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

themselves  some  particular  analogies,  which  are  made  evident  upon 
comparing  these  families  one  with  another ;  hut  such  resemhlances 
are  never  the  same  amongst  many  families ;  and  two  groups,  that 
have  a  given  characteristic  in  common,  differ  through  some  other 
which,  notwithstanding,  links  one  of  them  to  a  group  more  remote. 
In  brief,  the  specific  characters  of  languages  are  like  those  of  ani- 
mals ;  no  characteristic  taken  singly  possesses  an  absolute  value, 
being  merely  a  true  indication  of  lineage  or  of  relationship.  It  is 
their  multiplicity,  the  frequent  recurrence  of  grammatical  forms  alto- 
gether special,  which  really  constitutes  families.  The  closer  affinity 
becomes  grasped  when  words  are  discovered,  either  in  their  "  ensem- 
ble," or  for  uses  the  most  customary  and  most  ancient,  to  be  iden- 
tically the  same. 

Thus,  then,  we  recognise  two  degrees  of  relationship  among  the 
idioms  spoken  by  mankind,  viz :  the  relationship  of  words  coupled 
with  a  conformity  of  the  general  grammatical  system ;  or,  this  con- 
formity without  similitude  of  vocabulary.  Languages  may  be  termed 
daughters  or  sisters  when  they  offer  the  former  degree  of  relationship, 
and  allied  when  they  are  connected  through  the  latter. 

Do  all  languages  proceed  from  a  common  stock — from  one  primitive 
tongue,  which  has  been  the  (souche)  trunk  of  the  branches  now-a- 
days  living  isolately  ? 

This,  for  a  long  time,  was  believed.  Nevertheless,  such  belief  was 
not  based  upon  an  attentive  comparison  of  tongues  that  had  either 
not  yet  been  attempted,  or  which  was  hardly  even  sketched  out :  but 
it  arose  simply  from  confidence  reposing  upon  the  recital  of  Genesis, 
and  owing  to  the  servile  interpretation  that  had  been  foisted  upon 
its  text.  Genesis,  indeed,  tells  us,  at  the  beginning  of  its  Xlth  chap- 
ter,1— "  There  were  then  upon  all  the  earth  one  single  language  and  the 
same  words." 

This  remark  of  the  sacred  historian  has  for  its  object  to  explain 
the  account  of  the  Tower  of  Babylon.  The  nature  of  his  narrative 
cannot  occasion  doubt  in  the  eyes  of  criticism  the  least  practised. 
We  have  here  a  myth  that  is  certainly  very  ancient,  and  which  the 
Hebrews  had  brought  hack  again  (after  the  Captivity)  from  their 
mother-country.  But  it  is  impossible  to  behold  in  it  an  expose  really 
historical.  The  motive  given  for  the  construction  of  the  tower  is 
that  which  would  suggest  itself  to  the  mind  of  a  simple  and  ignorant 
population,  unable  to  comprehend  the  reason  why  the  Assyrians 
should  erect  this  tower  destined  for  astronomical  observations,  inti- 

1  Verse  1 ;  Hebrew  Text  (Cahen,  La  Bible,  Traduction  nouvelle,  Paris,  1831,  i.  p.  28)  — 
"  And  now  [KuL— H-AReTs]  the  whole  earth  was  of  [S/iePAeH  AKha.1l]  one  lip  and  of 
[DeBeRIJI  AKAaDIM]  one  (set  of)  words." 


CLASSIFICATION     OF    TONGUES.  27 

mately  woven  with,  their  religion.  And  the  explanation  of  the  name 
of  BaBeL  (Babylon)  itself  completes  the  evidence  that  the  recital  had 
been  written  ex  post  facto  ;  and,  like  so  many  myths,  suggested  by 
the  double  acceptation  of  a  word.2 

The  confounding  of  the  speech  of  the  whole  earth,  could  have  been 
but  the  work  of  time,  and  of  time  very  prolonged ;  because  we  now 
know  what  lengthened  persistency,  what  vitality,  is  the  property  of 
tongues !  One  perceives  in  this  antique  legend  a  remembrance  of 
the  confusion  which  prevailed  among  the  divers  peoples,  and  amid 
the  different  races,  who  visited  Babylon  for  political  or  commercial 
interests.  As  these  populations  must  have  been  already  very  divided, 
their  languages  were  parcelled  out,  at  the  period  of  the  narrative, 
into  a  great  number  of  dialects ;  and  the  simultaneous  employment 
of  all  these  idioms  in  one  and  the  same  city  appropriately  gave  it  the 
name  of  City  of  confusion.  Babylon,  moreover  (like  its  modern  suc- 
cessor, Bagdad  of  the  present  day),  was.  situate  almost  at  the  point  of 
partition  of  the  two  great  branches  of  the  white  race,  viz :  the  She- 
mites,  or  Syro- Arabians,  on  the  one  side,  and  of  the  Japetid^;,  or 
Irauo-Arians,  on  the  other.  The  valley  of  Shinar  was  then,  there- 
fore, as  the  frontier-line  betwixt  two  races  who  possessed  some  tradi- 
tions of  a  common  origin;  and  the  Biblical  mythos  of  the  "  Tower" 
had  for  its  object  an  explanation  of  the  forgotten  motives  of  their 
separation. 

Certainly,  if  one  were  to  take  the  account  of  Genesis  to  the  letter, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  suppose  that  the  first  men  had  not  yet 
attained  more  than  the  first  degrees  of  speech,  and  that  their  idiom 
was  then  of  great  simplicity.     Now,  this  primitive  idiom  ought  to 

2  [It  is  an  amusing  coincidence  that,  while  the  above  scientific  passages  by  my  erudite 
friend,  M.  Maury,  are  in  the  stereotyper's  hands,  the  religious  and  profane  press  of 
the  United  States  should  be  ringing  with  the  joyful  news  of  the  actual  discovery,  on  the 
classic  plain  of  Arbela  too,  of  "that  Titanic  structure"  (as  the  enthusiastic  penny-a-liner 
well  terms  it),  the  "  Tower  of  Babel"  !  "  Surprising,"  indeed,  would  it  be  were  such  disco- 
very authentic.  It  becomes  still  more  "surprising"  in  view  of  the  palpable  anachronisms 
by  which  this  pious  writer  betrays  his  total  ignorance  of  the  nature,  epochas,  and  results, 
of  cuneiform  researches:  but,  what  seems  most  "surprising"  is,  that  this  newest  canard  of 
some  adolescent  missionary  writing  to  Boston  (the  "modern  Athens")  from  "Beirut,  Dec. 
8,  1856,"  should  travel  the  rounds  of  the  whole  press  of  America  without  (so  far  as  I  can 
learn)  one  word  of  critical  commentary,  or  exposure  of  its  preposterous  fallacies.  Those 
who,  even  in  this  country,  follow  step  by  step  each  discovery  made  in  Assyria,  for  account 
of  the  Imperial  Government,  by  the  erudite  and  indefatigable  Monsieur  Place,  as  it  is 
announced  at  Paris,  are  perfectly  aware  that  every  newly-examined  "  tower  "  in  that  region 
(besides  being  long  posterior  in  age  to  the  last  built  of  67  Egyptian  pyramids)  only  affords 
additional  "  confirmations  "  of  the  modus  through  which, — during  the  Babylonish  captivity, 
and  duly  registered  in  passages  of  Hebrew  literature  written  after  the  "school  of  Esdras" 
established  itself  at  Jerusalem — this  myth  of  the  "  Tower  of  BaBJeL,"  as  shown  above,  arose 
in  the  Israclitish  mind.     Compare  Types  of  Mankind,  1854,  pp.  297,  506,  559-60: — G.  R.  G.] 


28  ON     THE     DISTRIBUTION    AND 

have  preserved  itself  the  least  altered  in  that  very  country  where  lan- 
guages had  been  one  at  the  beginning.  And  yet,  the  Hebrew  and 
Chaldsean  tongues,  which  were  those  of  these  countries,  are  very  far 
from  belonging  to  what  may  be  called  the  first  floor  in  the  formation 
of  language.  The  Chinese,  and  the  languages  of  Thibet  as  well  as 
of  the  trans-Gangetic  peninsula,  have  held  to  much  more  of  the  type 
of  primitive  tongues,  than  have  those  of  the  Semitic  stock.  Analo- 
gies infinitely  greater  ought  to  be  perceived  among  the  most  ancient 
languages — Hebrew,  Egyptian,  Sanscrit,  Chinese ;  inasmuch  as  they 
should  be  much  nearer  to  the  source.  Albeit  we  meet  with  nothing 
of  the  kind ;  and  the  style  of  Genesis  no  more  resembles  that  of  the 
Chinese  "  Kings,"  than  the  language  of  the  Rig-veda  approaches  that 
which  the  hieroglyphics  have  preserved  for  us.  Amidst  these  idioms 
there  exists  nothing  but  those  identities  that  are  due  to  the  use  of 
onomatopees,  which  was  more  frequent  in  primitive  times  than  at 
the  present  day.  The  grammatical  forms  are  different.  Now,  let  us 
note  that — such  is  the  persistency  of  these  forms  in  languages — the 
Greek  and  the  German,  which  have  been  separated  from  the  San- 
scritic  stem  for  more  than  3000  years,  have  preserved,  notwithstand- 
ing, a  common  stock  of  grammar.  How  much  richer  should  not 
this  stock  have  been  amongst  those  languages  of  which  we  cited  the 
names  above. 

Besides,  even  were  the  similar  words  of  these  primitive  idioms 
much  more  numerous  than  a  few  biliteral  and  monosyllabic  onoma- 
topees, this  would  be  far  from  sufficing  to  establish  unity.  Many 
similar  words  result,  in  tongues  the  most  diverse,  from  the  natural 
(liaisons)  connections  that  certain  sounds  have  with  such  or  such 
another  sensation.  Between  the  word  and  the  perception,  there  are 
very  many  secret  analogies  that  escape  us,  and  which  were  more  de- 
cided when  man  lived  in  closer  contact  with  nature.  This  is  what 
the  learned  historian  of  Semitic  tongues,  M.  Ernest  Bjenan,3  has  judi- 
ciously remarked.  Primitive  man  endeavored  to  imitate  everything 
that  surrounded  him ;  because  he  lived  altogether  externally.  Other 
verbal  resemblances  are  the  effect  of  chance.  The  scale  of  sounds  in 
human  speech  is  too  little  extended,  and  the  sounds  themselves  merge 
too  easily  one  into  another,  to  prevent  the  possibility  of  the  produc- 
tion of  a  fortuitous  affinity  in  a  given  case. 

Similitudes,  to  be  veritable,  ought  to  be  grounded  upon  principles 
more  solid  than  a  few  rare  analogies.  And  these  resemblances  do 
not  exist  among  those  languages  carried,  according  to  the  ipse  dixit 
of  the  slavish  interpreters  of  Genesis,  from  the  valley  of  Shinar  to 
the  four  corners  of  the  world.     The  constitution  of  the  tongues  of 

8  Histoire  et  Systirne  comparS  des  Langues  Semicigiies,  Paris,  8vo.,  Ire  partie,  1855. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  29 

each,  family  appears  as  a  primitive  fact,  of  which  we  can  no  more 
pierce  the  origins  than  we  can  seize  those  of  the  animal  species.  In 
the  same  manner  that  creation  has  sported  amid  the  infinite  varieties 
of  one  and  the  same  type,  so  human  intelligence  has  manifested 
itself  through  a  multitude  of  idioms  which  have  different]/  rendered 
its  conceptions  and  its  ideas. 


SECTION  n. 

The  ancient  grammarians,  who  submitted  speech  to  a  logical  and 
reasoned  analysis,  had  figured  to  themselves  that,  in  its  formation,  the 
human  mind  musl  have  followed  the  rational  march  indicated  by 
reason.  An  examination  of  the  facts  has  proved  that  there  happened 
nothing  of  the  sort. 

Upon  studying  a  tongue  at  the  divers  epochs  of  its  grammatical 
existence,  it  has  become  settled  that  our  processes  of  logic  and  of 
analysis  were  unknown  to  the  first  men.  Thought  presented  itself 
at  first  under  a  form  at  one  and  the  same  time  confused  and  complex, 
in  which  the  mind  had  no  consciousness  of  the  elements  of  which  it 
was  composed.  Sensations  succeeded  each  other  so  rapidly  that 
memory  and  speech,  in-  lieu  of  reproducing  their  signs  separately, 
reflected  them  all  together  in  their  simultaneous  action.  Thought 
was  wholly  sympathetic.  That  which  demonstrates  it  is,  that  the 
most  ancient  languages  offer  this  character  in  the  highest  degree. 
In  them  the  word  is  not  distinguishable  from  the  phrase, — otherwise 
speaking,  they  talked  by  phrases,  and  not  by  words.  Each  expres- 
sion is  the  complete  organism,  of  which  the  parts  are  not  only 
appendices  one  of  another,  but  are  inclosed  within  each  other,  or  are 
tightly  interlocked.  This  is  what  philologists  have  termed  aggluti- 
nation, polysynthetism.  Such  manner  of  expressing  oneself  is  doubt- 
less little  favorable  to  perspicuity ;  but,  besides  that  the  first  men  were 
far  from  possessing  the  clear  and  precise  ideas  of  our  time,  their 
conception  was  sufficiently  simple  to  be  seized  without  great  labor 
of  reflection.  Furthermore,  men,  without  doubt,  then  understood 
each  other  rather  by  intuition  than  through  reasoning.  What  they 
sought  for  was  an  intimate  relation  between  their  sentiments  and 
those  vocal  signs,  by  the  help  of  which  the  former  could  be  manifested; 
and  these  relations  once  established,  they  were  perceived  and  com- 
prehended like  the  play  of  the  features,  like  the  meaning  of  a  gesture, 
rather  spontaneously  than  through  analysis  of  their  parts. 

In  whatever  method  we  would  explain  to  ourselves,  however,  this 
primitive  characteristic  of  human  speech,  it  is  now-a-days  not  the 


30  ON    THE     DISTRIBUTION    AND 

less  determined.  The  history  of  languages  is  but  the  continual 
march  from  synthesis  towards  analysis.  Everywhere  one  beholds  a 
first  idiom  giving  place  to  a  vulgar  tongue,  that  does  not  constitute, 
to  speak  correctly,  a  different  idiom,  but  which  is  a  vernacular  in  its 
second  pljasis,  that  is,  at  a  period  more  analytical.  Whilst  the 
primitive  tongue  is  overloaded  with  flexions  in  order  to  express  the 
more  delicate  relations  of  thought,  richer  in  images  if  perhaps  poorer 
in  ideas,  the  modern  dialect  is  clearer,  more  explicit,  —  separating 
that  which  the  ancients  crowded  together ;  breaking  up  the  mechan- 
isms of  the  ancient  tongue  so  as  to  give  to  each  idea,  and  to  each 
relation,  its  isolated  expression. 

And  here  let  not  the  expressions  be  confounded  with  the  words. 
The  words,  otherwise  called  the  elements,  that  enter  into  the  expres- 
sion, are  short,  generally  monosyllabic,  furnished  nearly  all  with 
short  vowels  or  with  simple  consonants ;  but  these  words  disappear 
in  the  expressions  within  which  they  enter ; — one  does  not  seize  them 
more  than  can  the  eye,  in  the  color  green,  distinguish  the  blue  and 
yellow.  The  composing  words  are  pressed  (imbricated,  to  speak  with 
botanists),  to  such  degree,  that  one  might  call  them,  according  to 
the  comparison  of  Jacob  Grimm,  blades  of  herbage  in  a  grass-plot. 
And  that  which  takes  place,  for  the  composition  of  the  expressions, 
happens  also  as  regards  the  pronunciation  of  the  words  that  so  strin- 
gently cling  to  them,  viz :  the  same  simplicity  of  sounds,  inasmuch 
as  the  expression  must  nevertheless  allow  all  the  parts  of  its  organ- 
ism to  be  seized.  "ISTo  primitive  tongue,"  writes  M.  Jacob  Grimm, 
in  his  memoir  on  the  origin  of  speech,  "  possesses  a  duplication  of 
consonant.  This  doubling  arises  solely  from  the  gradual  assimilation 
of  different  consonants."  At  the  secondary  epoch  there  appear  the 
diphthongs  and  breakages  (brisements) ;  whereas  the  tertiary  is  char- 
acterized by  softenings  and  by  other  alterations  in  the  vowels. 

Above  all,  it  is  the  Sanscrit  which  has  made  evident  these  curious 
laws  of  the  gradual  transformation  of  languages.  The  Sanscrit,  with 
its  admirable  richness  of  grammatical  forms,  its  eight  eases,  its  six 
moods, — its  numerous  terminations  and  its  varied  forms  enouncing, 
alongside  of  the  principal  idea,  a  host  of  accessory  notions — was  emi- 
nently suited  to  the  study  of  the  growth  and  decline  of  a  tongue.  At 
its  debut,  in  the  Eig-veda,  the  language  appears  with  this  synthetic 
character;  these  continual  inversions,  these  complex  expressions  that 
we  just  now  signalized  as  conditions  in  the  primordial  exercise  of 
thought.  Afterwards  follows  the  Sanscrit  of  the  grand  epopees  of 
India.  The  language  had  then  acquired  more  suppleness,  whilst 
preserving,  nevertheless,  the  rigidity  of  its  pristine  processes :  but 
soon  the  grammatical  edifice  becomes  decomposed.    The  Pali,  which 


CLASSIFICATION"    OP    TONGUES.  31 

corresponds  to  its  first  age  of  alteration,  is  stamped  with  a  remark- 
able spirit  of  analysis.  "The  laws  that  presided  over  the  formation 
of  this  tongue,"  writes  Eugene  Burnouf,4  "are  those  of  which  the 
application  is  discernible  in  other  idioms,  at  diverse  epocbas  and  in 
very  different  countries.  These  laws  are  general,  inasmuch  as  they 
are  necessary.  Let  the  Latin,  in  fact,  be  compared  with  the  lan- 
guages which  are  derived  from  it;  the  ancient  Teutonic  dialects 
with  the  tongues  of  the  same  origin ;  the  ancient  Greek  with  the 
modern  ;  the  Sanscrit  with  the  numerous  popular  dialects  of  India ; 
and  the  same  principles  will  be  seen  to  develop  themselves,  the  same 
laws  to  be  applicable.  The  organic  inflections  of  the  mother  tongues 
subsist  in  part,  but  in  an  evident  state  of  alteration.  More  generally 
they  disappear,  and  are  replaced ;  the  cases  by  particles,  the  tenses 
by  auxiliary  verbs.  These  processes  vary  from  one  tongue  to 
another,  but  the  principle  remains  the  same.  It  is  always  analysis, 
whether  a  synthetical  language  finds  itself  suddenly  spoken  by  bar- 
barians who,  not  understanding  the  structure,  suppress  and  replace 
its  inflexions ;  or  whether,  abandoned  to  its  own  course,  and  by  dint 
of  being  cultivated,  it  tends  towards  decomposition,  and  to  subdi- 
vide the  signs  representative  of  ideas  and  of  the  relations  them- 
selves." 

Tbe  Prakrit,  which  represents  the  secondary  age  of  alteration  in 
ancient  tongues,  is  submitted  to  the  same  analogies.  On  the  one 
hand,  it  is  less  rich;  on  the  other,  simple  and  more  facile.  Finally, 
the  Kawi,  ancient  idiom  of  Java,  is  a  corruption  of  the  Sanscrit ; 
wherein  this  language,  deprived  of  its  inflexions,  has  taken  in  their 
place  the  prepositions  and  the  vernacular  dialects  of  that  island. 
These  three  tongues,  themselves  formed  through  derivation  from  the 
Sanscrit,  soon  undergo  the  same  lot  as  their  motber :  they  become, 
each  in  its  turn,  dead,  learned,  and  sacred  languages, — the  Pali,  in 
the  isle  of  Ceylon  and  in  Indo-Cbina ;  the  Prakrit  among  the  Djainas ; 
the  Kawi  in  the  islands  of  Java,  Bali  and  Madoura ;  and  in  their 
place  arise  in  India  dialects  more  popular  still,  the  tongues  Crours, 
Hindee,  Cashmerian,  Bengalee,  the  dialect  of  Guzerat,  the  Mahratta, 
&c,  together  with  the  other  vulgar  idioms  of  Hindostan,  of  which 
the  system  is  far  less  learned.5 

Languages  of  the  regions  intermediary  between  India  and  the 
Caucasus  offer,  in  their  relation  and  affiliation,  differences  of  the 
same  order.  At  the  more  ancient  periods  appear  the  Zend  and  tbe 
Parsi,  bound  together  through  a  close  relationship  with  the  Sanscrit, 
but  corresponding  to  two  different  developments  of  the  faculty  of 

4  Sssai  sur  le  Pali,  par  E.  Bcrnouf  et  Chr.  Lassen. 

6  Ernest  Renan,  Op.  cit.,  "de  l'origme  du  langage,"  p.  22. 


32  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION'    AND 

speech.  The  Zend,  notwithstanding  its  traits  of  resemblance  with 
the  Vedic  Sanscrit,  allows  our  perceiving,  as  it  were,  the  first  symp- 
toms of  a  labor  of  condensation  in  the  pronunciation,  and  of  analysis 
in  the  expression.  It  wears  all  the  external  guise  of  a  tongue  with 
flexions  (langue  a  flexion) ;  but  at  the  epoch  of  the  Sassanides  [a.  d.' 
224  to  644]  as  M.  Spiegel  remarks,  it  already  commences  to  dis- 
robe itself  of  them.  The  tendency  to  analysis  makes  itself  by  far  more 
felt  in  the  old  Persic,  or  Parsi ;  and,  in  modern  Persian,  decomposi- 
tion has  attained  its  ultimate  term. 

We  might  reproduce  the  same  observations  for  the  languages  of 
the  Caucasus,  the  Armenian  and  the  Georgian;  for  Semitic  tongues, 
by  comparing  the  Rabbinical  with  the  ancient  Hebrew;  but  what  has 
been  already  said  suflices  for  the  comprehension  of  the  fact. 

The  cause  of  these  transformations  is  found  in  the  very  condition 
of  a  tongue,  in  the  method  through  which  it  moulds  itself  upon  the 
impressions  and  wants  of  the  mind, — it  proceeds  from  its  own  mode 
of  generation.  An  idiom  is  an  organism  subject,  like  every  organ- 
ism, to  the  laws  of  development.  One  must  not,  writes  Wilhelm 
von  Hulmboldt,  consider  a  language  as  a  product  dead  and  formed 
but  once ;  it  is  an  animate  being  and  ever  creative.  Human  thought 
elaborates  itself  with  the  progress  of  intelligence;  and  of  this  thought, 
language  is  a  manifestation.  An  idiom  cannot,  therefore,  remain 
stationary ;  it  walks,  it  develops  itself,  it  grows  up,  it  fortifies  itself, 
it  becomes  old,  and  it  reaches  decrepitude. 

The  tongue  sets  forth  with  a  first  phonetic  radical,  which  renders 
the  sensation  in  all  its  simplicity  and  its  generality.  This  is  not  yet 
a  verb,  nor  an  adjective,  nor  a  substantive ;  it  is  a  word  that  expresses 
the  common  sensation  that  may  lie  at  the  bottom  of  these  gramma- 
tical categories ;  which  translates  the  sentiment  of  welfare,  of  plea- 
sure, of  pain,  of  joy,  of  hope,  of  light,  or  of  heat.  In  the  use  that 
is  made  of  speech,  there  is  doubtless  by  turns  a  sense  verbal  or 
nominal,  adverbial  or  qualifying ;  but  nothing,  however,  in  its  form 
indicates  or  specifies  such  a  part  (role).  Very  simple  languages  are 
still  nearly  all  at  this  elementary  stage.  It  is  at  a  later  day  only  that 
the  mind  creates  those  formswhich  are  called  members  of  a  discourse. 
These  had  existed  without  doubt  virtually,  but  the  intelligence  did 
not  feel  the  need  of  distinguishing  them  profoundly  by  an  essential 
form.  Subsequently  there  forms  went  on  multiplying  themselves ; 
but  their  abundance  no  less  than  their  nature  has  varied  according 
to  countries  and  to  races.  Sometimes  it  is  upon  the  verb  that 
imagination  has  exhausted  all  the  shades  of  expression ;  at  others  it 
is  to  the  substantive  that  it  has  attributed  these  modifications.  Mind 
has  been  more  or  less  inventive,  and  more  or  less  rational :  it  has 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  33 

seized  here  upon  delicacies  which  completely  escaped  it  tnere ;  and 
in  the  clumsiest  tongues  one  remarks  shadowings,  or  gradations, 
that  are  wanting  to  the  most  refined.  Of  this  let  us  give  an  example : 
— the  Sanscrit  is  a  great  deal  richer  than  Greek  in  the  manner  by 
the  aid  of  which  it  expresses  the  relationship  of  the  noun  to  a  phrase, 
and  the  relations  of  words  between  themselves.  It  possesses  a  far 
deeper  and  much  purer  sentiment  of  the  nature  of  the  verb  and  of 
its  intrinsic  value :  yet,  notwithstanding,  the  conception  of  the  mood 
in  a  verb,  considered  as  distinct  from  time,  escaped  it,  —  the  verbal 
nature  of  the  infinitive  remained  to  it  unknown.  Sanscrit  in  this 
respect,  therefore,  yields  to  Greek,  which,  moreover,  is  united  to  it 
by  very  tight  bands. 

Thus  then,  human  intelligence  did  not  arrive  in  eveiy  language 
to  the  same  degree,  and  consequently  it  did  not  create  the  same 
secondary  wheel-work.  The  general  mechanism  presented  itself 
everywhere  the  same ;  because  this  mechanism  proceeds  from  the 
internal  nature  of  our  mind,  and  this  nature  is  the  same  for  all 
mankind. 

The  genius  of  each  tongue,  then,  marked  out  its  pattern  ;  and  this 
genius  has  been  more  or  less  fecund,  exhibits  more  or  less  of  mobility. 
"Words  have  constantly  represented  the  same  order  of  objects,  because 
these  objects  do  not  change  according  to  countries  or  according  to 
races ;  but  they  are  offered  imder  aspects  the  most  varied,  and  these 
aspects  have  not  always  been  identical  under  different  skies  and 
amid  diverse  societies.  Hence  the  creation  of  words  in  unequal 
number  to  represent  the  same  sum-total  of  known  objects.  The 
brilliant  imagination  of  one  people  has  been  a  never-failing  source 
of  new  wojds,  of  novel  forms ;  at  the  same  time  that,  amongst 
others,  the  idea  has  remained  almost  embryonic,  and  the  object  ever 
presented  itself  under  the  same  aspect.  If  given  impressions  were 
paramount,  the  words  by  which  they  were  translated  became  greatly 
multiplied. 

In  the  days  of  chivalry  there  was  a  host  of  expressions  to  render 
the  idea  of  horse.  In  Sanscrit,  the  language  of  Hiudostan,  where  the 
elejihant  plays  a  part  as  important  as  the  horse  among  ourselves, 
words  abound  to  designate  this  pachyderm.  Sometimes  it  is  de- 
nominated as  "the  twice-drinking  animal,"  sometimes  as  "he  who 
has  two  teeth;"  sometimes  as  "the  animal  with  proboscis."  And 
that  which  happens  for  substantives  occurs  also  for  verbs.  Among 
the  American  tongues,  spoken  by  populations  who  had  few  objects 
before  their  sight,  but  whose  life  consisted  altogether  in  action  and 
feeling,  verbal  forms  are  singularly  multitudinous.  On  the  opposite 
hand,  in  Sanscrit  and  in  Greek,  which  were  spoken  in  the  presence 
3 


34  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

of  a  civilization  already  advanced,  amid  an  infinitude  of  productions 
of  nature  or  of  industry,  the  nouns  take  precedence  over  the  verbs. 
Here  the  richness  of  the  cases  dispenses  with  the  rigorous  sense  of .. 
prepositions,  as  occurs  in  Greek ;  whereas  among  ourselves,  who  in 
French  possess  no  longer  any  cases,  the  meaning  of  the  phrase  exacts 
that  our  prepositions  should  be  well  defined.  Hence,  then,  the  life 
itself  of  a  people  has  been  the  source  of  the  modifications  operated 
in  its  tongue,  and  each  idiom  has  pursued  its  development  after  its 
own  fashion. 

Two  causes  combine  towards  effecting  an  alteration  of  languages, 
viz :  their  development  within  themselves,  and  their  contact  with 
foreign  idioms, — above  all  with  such  as  belong  to  families  altogether 
distinct ;  but  the  second,  compared  to  the  first,  is  of  small  account. 
The  influence  of  neighboring  foreign  tongues  introduces  some  new 
words  and  sundry  locutions,  certain  "  idiotisms ;"  but  it  cannot,  without 
difficulty,  inject  into  alien  speech  those  grammatical  forms  which  are 
its  own  heritage.  Its  influence  re-acts  much  more  upon  the  style  than 
on  the  grammar.  If  two  languages  of  distinct  families  are  spoken  by 
neighboring  populations,  or  by  those  living  in  perpetual  contact,  it  or- 
dinarily happens  that  the  most  analytical  tongue  forces  its  processes  to 
penetrate  into  that  which  is  the  less  so.  Thence  it  is  that  the  German, 
brought  into  contact  with  the  French,  loses  a  portion  of  its  syntheti- 
cal expressions,  as  well  as  the  habitual  use  of  those  compound 
phrases  which  it  received  from  the  Asiatic  speech  whence  it  issued ; 
and  that  the  French,  when  spoken  by  Negroes,  is  stripped  of  its 
grammatical  richness,  and  becomes  simplified  almost  to  the  level  of 
an  African  tongue.  In  the  same  manner  the  Armorican,  or  Bas- 
Breton,  whilst  preserving  the  ground-work  of  Celtic  grammar,  is 
now-a-days  spoken  under  a  form  that  recalls  more  of  French  than  of 
the  ancient  Armorican. 

One  sees,  therefore,  that  the  crossing  of  languages,  like  that  of 
races,  has  really  not  been  very  deep.  Once  invaded  by  a  stranger- 
tongue,  one  of  a  nature  more  logical  in  its  processes,  the  old  lan- 
guage either  has  not  undergone  more  than  superficial  alterations,  or 
has  disappeared  entirely,  without  bequeathing  to  the  idiom  which 
followed  it  any  inheritance  but  that  of  a  few  words.  Such  is  what 
happened  to  Latin  as  regards  the  Gallic  (G-aulois).  This  Celtic 
tongue  is  completely  supplanted  by  the  idiom  of  the  Romans,  and  has 
left  no  other  vestiges  of  its  existence  than  a  few  words,  together  with, 
doubtless,  some  peculiarities  of  pronunciation  also  that  have  passed 
into  the  French.  One  perceives  equally  well  in  English,  here  and 
there,  words  and  locutions  that  appertain  to  the  Welsh ;  and  which, 


CLASSIFICATION     OP     TONGUES.  do 

in  consequence,  must  be  a  heritage  of  the  tongue  whilom  spoken  by 
the  Kelts  of  Albion. 

If  the  grammatical  dispossession  of  a  language  could  have  been 
wrought  gradually,  one  ought  to  find  some  mixed  phrases  at  the 
living  period  of  those  tongues  that  have  been  driven  out  by  others. 
Now,  such  is  not  the  case.  The  Basque,  for  example,  foreign  in 
origin  both  to  French  and  Spanish,  has  indeed  been  altered  through 
the  adoption  of  a  few  words  and  a  few  locutions  borrowed  from  these 
languages,  by  which  it  is  surrounded,  and,  as  it  were,  invested ;  but 
it  evermore  clings  to  the  basis  of  its  structure,  the  vital  principle 
of  its  organism ;  and  a  Franco-Basque,  or  a  Basco-Spanish,  is  not 
spoken,  nowhere  has  ever  been  spoken.  Modern  Greek  has  appro- 
priated many  words  from  Turkish,  no  less  than  from  Italian,  as  well 
as  some  expressions  of  both  tongues ;  but  its  entire  construction 
remains  fundamentally  Hellenic,  notwithstanding  that  it  belongs 
to  the  analytical  period,  and  that  the  ancient  Greek  was  still 
emerging  frorn  the  synthetic.  Again,  the  Persian,  which  is  so 
imbued  with  Arabic  words  that  writers  of  this  language  often  inter- 
calate sentences  wholly  Arabic  in  their  discourses,  remains,  never- 
theless, completely  Indo-Germanic  as  concerns  its  grammar.  But 
we  have  not  seen  that  this  tongue  has  ever  associated  the  Persian 
declension  with  the  Arabic  conjugation,  or  yoked  the  Persian  pre- 
positions to  Semitic  affixes  and  suffixes.  Finally,  the  Osmanlee 
Turkish,  besides  incorporating  words  of  every  language  with  which 
the  Turks  have  been  in  contact  for  more  than  a  thousand  years,  has 
purloined  all  its  scientific  nomenclature  from  the  Arabs,  most  of  its 
polite  diplomatic  phrases  from  the  Persians;  but,  whilst  fusing 
Semitic  as  well  as  Indo-European  exotic  words  into  its  copia  ver- 
borum,  the  radical  structure  of  its  so-called  Tartarian  [or,  Turanian] 
grammar,  no  less  than  its  original  vocabulary,  is  still  so  tenaciously 
preserved,  that  a  coarse  Siberian  Yakut  can  even  now,  after  ages  of 
ancestral  separation,  communicate  his  simple  ideas  to  the  intelligence 
of  a  Constantinopolitan  Turko-Sybarite. 

All  these  considerations  show  us,  therefore,  that  the  families  of 
tongues  are  assemblages  (des  ensembles)  very  distinct,  and  the  results 
of  a  diversified  order  of  the  creative  faculty  of  speech.  This  faculty 
does  not,  then,  appear  to  us  as  absolutely  identical  in  its  action ;  and 
we  must  necessarily  admit  that  it  corresponds,  under  its  different 
forms,  to  races  of  mankind  possessing  different  faculties,  as  well  for 
speech  as  for  ideas.  This  is  what  the  study  of  the  principal  classes 
or  families  of  tongues  will  make  still  more  evident ;  seeing  that  we 
shall  find  them  in  a  relation  sufficiently  striking  to  the  different 
human  races. 


36  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

One  of  the  most  skilful  philologists  of  Germany,  M.  A.  E.  Pott, 
Professor  of  Linguistics  at  the  University  of  Halle,  has  recently 
combated    (in    a  work   entitled,   "  The  Inequality  of  Human  Races, 
viewed  especially  as  regards  the  Constitution  of  their  Speech,5)  the  hypo- 
thesis of  a  unique  primitive  language,  whence  all  others  are  supposed 
to  have  issued ;  and  he  has  shown  that  it  has  no  more  foundation  than 
that  which  would  make  all  the  species  of  one  and  the  same  genus 
issue  from  a  single  individual,  and  all  varieties  from  one  primitive 
type.    He  has  claimed  for  languages  an  ethnological  character,  suited 
to  the  classification  of  races,  not  less  certain  than  the  physical  type 
and  the   corporeal  forms.     Perhaps    even,  he  observes,  the  idiom 
is  a  criterion  more  certain  than  the  physical  constitution.     Does  not 
speech,  in  fact,  reflect  the  intelligence  better, — is   not  language 
more  competent  to  give  the  latter' s  measurement,  than  can  be  gath- 
ered from  the  dimensions  of  the  facial  angle,  and  the  amplitude  of 
the  cranium  ?     A  powerful  mind  may  inhabit  a  slender  and  mis- 
shapen body,  whilst  a  well-made  tongue,  rich  in  forms  and  nuances, 
could  not  take  its  birth  among  intellects  infirm  or  degenerate.    This 
observation  of  M.  Pott  is  just ;  but  it  ought  likewise  to  be  allowed 
that  the  classification  of  languages  offers,  perhaps,  more  uncertainty 
than  that  of  races  considered  physiologically.     The  truth  of  this 
remark  of  M.  Pott  must,  nevertheless,  be  restricted ;  because  speech 
is  not  the  complete  measure  of  intelligence,  taken  in  the  aggregate. 
It  is  merely  proportionate  to  the  degree  of  perception  of  relationships, 
of  sensibility,  and  of  memory :  because  we  shall  see,  further  on,  that 
some  peoples,  very  far  advanced  in  civilization,  could  have  a  language 
very  imperfect  in  its  forms ;  at  the  same  time  that  some  savage  tribes 
do  speak  an  idiom  possessing  a  certain  grammatical  richness. 

SECTION  in. 

Philologists  who  have  devoted  themselves  to  the  comparative  study 
of  the  languages  of  Europe,  MM.  F.  Bopp  and  Pott,  in  particular, 
have  established  the  more  or  less  close  relationship  of  these  tongues 
amongst  each  other.  All,  with  the  exception  of  some  idioms,  of 
which  we  shall  treat  anon,  offer  the  same  grammatical  system,  and 
a  vocabulary  whose  words  can  be  attached  one  to  another  through 
the  rules  of  etymology.  I  say  the  rules,  because  etymology  now-a- 
days  possesses  its  own,  and  is  no  longer  governed  by  arbitrary,  often 
ingenious,  but  chimerical  distinctions.     Through  the  attentive  com- 

5  Die  Ungleichheit  menschlicher  Rassen  haupsachlich  vo.n  SprachwissenschaJ '(lichen  Standpunkte, 
vnter  besonderer  Berilchsichtigung  von  des  Grafen  von  Gobineau  gleichnamigen  Werke;  Leingo 
&  Detmold,  8vo.,  1S56. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  37 

parison  of  the  changes  that  well-known  words  have  undergone  in 
passing  from  one  language  into  another,  modern  philology  has  be- 
come enabled  to  grasp  the  laws  of  permutation  as  regards  the  letters, 
and  the  regular  processes  for  the  exchange  of  sounds.  These  facts 
once  settled,  it  has  become  possible  to  trace  backward  words,  in  appear- 
ance strangely  dissimilar,  to  a  common  root  which  stands  forth  as  the 
type  whence  modifications  have  produced  all  these  derivative  words. 

It  is  in  the  Sanscrit  that  this  type  has  been  discovered ;  or,  at  the 
very  least,  the  Sanscrit  presents  itself  under  a  form  much  more 
ancient  than  the  European  formations ;  and,  in  consequence,  it  ap- 
proaches nearest  to  that  type  of  which  we  can  no  longer  grasp  any 
but  the  diversified  derivatives. 

In  like  manner,  the  grammar  of  the  languages  of  Europe,  in  its 
fundamental  forms,  is  recognized  in  the  Sanscrit  grammar.  This 
grammar,  of  which  we  specified  above  the  character  and  richness, 
incloses,  so  to  speak,  in  substance,  those  of  all  the  European  idioms. 
The  elements  which  compose  these  idioms  are  like  so  many  debris  of 
a  more  ancient  tongue,  whose  model  singularly  approximates  to  the 
Sanscrit.  It  is  not,  however,  that  the  languages  of  Europe  have  not 
each  their  own  riches  and  their  individual  genius  besides.  In  cer- 
tain points  they  are  often  more  developed  than  the  Sanscrit.  But, 
taken  in  their  collective  amplitude,  they  are  certainly  branches  more 
impoverished  than  that  which  constitutes  the  Sanscrit.  These 
branches  appertain  to  a  common  source  that  is  called  Indo-European 
or  Indo-Crermanic.  The  sap  seems,  nevertheless,  to  have  exhausted 
itself  little  by  little ;  and  those  branches  most  distant  from  the  trunk 
have  no  longer  anything  like  the  youth,  fulness,  and  life,  which  flow 
in  the  vessels  of  the  branches  of  primary  formation. 

Hence  the  languages  of  Europe  belong  to  a  great  family,  that,  at 
an  early  hour,  divided  itself  into  many  branches,  of  whose  common 
ancestor  we  are  ignorant,  but  of  whom  we  encounter  in  the  Sanscrit 
the  chief  of  one  of  the  most  ancient  collateral  lines.  We  have  pre- 
viously stated  that  the  Persic  (Parsi)  and  the  Zend  were  two  tongues 
very  intimately  allied  to  the  Sanscrit.  They  are  consequently  sisters : 
and,  whilst  certain  tongues  of  Europe,  such  as  the  Greek  and  the 
Shlavic  languages,  recall,  in  a  sufficiently  striking  manner,  the  Sans- 
crit ;  others,  the  Germanic  tongues,  hold  more  closely  to  the  Persic 
and  the  Zend. 

Comparison  of  the  languages  of  Europe  has  caused  them  to  be 
grouped  into  four  great  classes,  representing,  as  it  were,  so  many  sis- 
ters from  the  same  mother,  but  sisters  who  have  not  been  called  to  an 
equality  of  partition.  The  more  one  advances  toward  the  East,  the 
more  are  found  those  tongues  that  have  partaken  of  the  inheritance. 


38  ON    THE     DISTRIBUTION    AND 

Whilst  the  Sclavonic  idioms,  and  in  particular  the  Lithuanian  family, 
have  preserved,  almost  without  alteration,  the  mould  of  which  Sans- 
crit yields  us  the  most  ancient  product,  the  Celtic  languages,  driven 
away  to  the  "West,  remind  us  only  in  a  sufficiently-remote  manner  of 
the  mother-tongue ;  and,  for  a  long  time,  it  was  thought  that  they 
constituted  a  group  apart. 

This  distribution  of  languages  in  Europe,  co-relative  in  their  affi- 
nity with  the  antique  idioms  once  spoken  from  the  shores  of  the  Cas- 
pian Sea  to  the  banks  of  the  Ganges,  is  an  incontestable  index  to  the 
Asiatic  origin  of  the  peoples  who  speak  them.  One  cannot  here  sup- 
pose a  fortuitous  circumstance.  It  is  clearly  seen  that  these  tribes 
issuing  from  Asia  had  impinged  one  against  another ;  and  the  Celts, 
as  the  most  ancient  immigrants  on  the  European  continent,  have 
ended  by  becoming  its  most  occidental  inhabitants. 

"We  have  been  saying  that  the  European  languages  of  Indo-Ger- 
manie  stock  are  referred  to  four  families.  We  have  already  enume- 
rated the  Celtic,  the  Indo-Germanic,  and  the  Shlavic  tongues.  The 
fourth  family,  which  may  be  called  Pelasgic,  comprehends  the  Greek, 
the  Latin,  and  all  the  languages  that  have  issued  from  them.  Let 
us  examine  separately  the  characteristics  of  these  linguistic  families, 
whose  destinies,  posteriorly  to  the  populations  which  spoke  them, 
have  exercised  such  influence  upon  those  of  humanity. 

The  Greco-Latin  group  has  received  the  name  of  Pelasgic,  Greece 
and  Italy  having  been  peopled  originally  by  a  common  race,  the  Pe- 
lasgi,  whose  idiom  may  be  considered  as  the  (souche)  source  of  the 
Greek  and  the  Latin.  The  first  of  these  tongues  is  not,  in  fact,  as 
had  been  formerly  imagined,  the  "mother"  of  the  other.  They  are 
simply  two  sisters :  and  if  a  different  age  is  to  be  assigned  to  them, 
the  Latin  possesses  claims  to  be  regarded  as  the  elder.  Indeed,  this 
language  presents  a  more  archaic  character  than  the  classical  Greek. 
The  most  ancient  dialect  of  the  Hellenic  idiom,  that  of  the  ^Eolians, 
resembles  the  Latin  much  more  than  the  later  dialects  of  Greek. 
Whilst,  in  this  last  tongue,  the  presence  of  the  article  announces  the 
secondary  period,  at  the  same  time  that  contractions  are  already  nu- 
merous, the  synthetical  character  is  more  pronounced  in  Latin ;  its 
grammatical  elements  have  not  yet  been  separated  into  so  many  dif- 
ferent words;  and  the  phraseology,  as  well  as  the  conjugation  and  the 
most  ancient  forms  of  declensions,  possess  a  striking  resemblance 
to  that  which  we  encounter  in  the  Sanscrit.  The  Latin  vocabu- 
lary contains,  over  and  above,  a  multitude  of  words  whose  archaic 
form  is  altogether  Sanscrit.  This  language  has  moreover  passed,  in 
its  grammatical  forms  and  its  syntax,  through  a  series  of  transforma- 
tions that  we  can  follow  from  the  most  ancient  epigraphic  and  poeti- 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  39 

cal  monuments  back  to  the  authors  of  the  IVth  and  Vth  century  before 
our  era.  Latin  itself  was  nothing  more  than  one  of  the  branches  of 
the  ancient  family  of  Italic  tongues,  and  which  comprehended  three 
branches, — the  Japygian,  the  Etruscan,  and  the  Italiot.  These  again, 
in  their  turn,  subdivide  themselves  into  two  branches :  the  first  con- 
stituting the  Latin  proper,  and  the  second  comprising  the  dialects  of 
the  Ombrians,  the  Marses,  the  Volsciaus,  and  the  Samnites. 

"We  are  acquainted  with  the  Japygian  tongue  solely  through  some 
inscriptions  found  in  Calabria,  and  belonging  to  the  Messaprine  dia- 
lect. Their  decipherment  is  as  yet  little  advanced ;  notwithstanding 
the  labors  that  comparative  philology  has  undertaken  in  these  latter 
days : 7  but,  what  of  it  is  understood  suffices  to  exhibit  to  us  an  Indo- 
European  tongue,  which  becomes  recognizable  in  a  much  more  certain 
manner  in  the  inscriptions  of  the  Italiot  languages ;  that  is  to  say,  of 
tongues  somewhat-closely  allied  to  the  Latin,  and  whose  forms 
approximate  already,  in  sundry  respects,  more  to  the  Sanscrit. 

The  comparison  of  these  last  idioms  to  their  Asiatic  prototype  per- 
mits us  not  merely  to  seize  the  relationship  of  the  tribes  that  spoke 
them.  It  enables  us  to  judge,  also,  of  the  degree  of  civilization  which 
they  had  attained  when  they  penetrated  into  Europe.  In  fact,  as  has 
been  remarked  by  one  of  the  most  accomplished  philologues  of  Ger- 
many, M.  Th.  Mommsen,  those  words  that  we  discover  at  once  with  the 
same  signification,  in  the  different  Indo-European  tongues, — except, 
be  it  well  understood,  the  modifications  which  became  elaborated  ac- 
cording to  the  inherent  genius  and  the  pronunciation  of  each  of  these 
languages — give  us  the  measure  of  the  social  state  of  the  emigrant 
race  at  the  moment  of  its  departure.  ~Eow,  all  the  names  of  cattle, 
of  domestic  animals,  for  ox,  sheep,  horse,  dog,  goose,8  are  the  same 
in  Sanscrit,  in  Latin,  in  Greek,  and  in  German.  Hence,  the  Indo- 
European  population  knew,  upon  entering  Europe,  how  to  rear  cattle. 
We  see  also  that  they  understood  the  art  of  constructing  carts,  yokes, 
and  fixed  habitations ; 9  that  the  use  of  salt10  was  common  with  them ; 

'  See  on  this  subject  the  learned  works  of  F.  G.  Geotefend,  entitled, — Rudimenta  lingua 
Umbricce  ex  inscripiionibus  antiquis  enodala  (Hanover,  1835) ; — of  S.  Th.  Aufrecht,  and  A. 
Kirchhoff,  Die  TTmblischen  Sprachdenkmdler  (Berlin,  1839)  ; — and  of  Th.  Mommsen,  Die  Un- 
teritalischen  Dialecte  (Leipzig,  1850). 

8  Sanscrit  gaus,  Latin  bos,  Greek  j3ots,  French  boivf,  English  beef: — Sanscrit  avis,  Latin 
ovis,  Greek  ois,  English  sheep : — Sanscrit  cevus,  Latin  equus,  Greek  "m-os,  English  horse.  The 
mutation  of  P  into  Q  is  again  met  with  in  passing  from  the  Umbrian  and  the  Sanscrit  into 
Latin ;  for  example,  pis  for  quis ;  Sanscrit  hansas,  Latin  anser,  Greek  ynv ;  and  the  same  for 
pecus,  taurus,  canis,  &c. 

9  Sanscrit  jugam,  Latin  j'ugum,  Greek  ?{,yov,  French  Jong,  English  yoke: — Sanscrit  akshas, 
Latin  axis,  Greek  afav  whence  Siia^a,  French  char,  English  car: — Sanscrit  damas,  Latin 
domus,  Greek  li^os : — Sanscrit  vtcas,  Latin  vicus,  Greek  d,Ko; ;  English  house. 

w  Sanscrit  saras,  Latin  sal,  Greek  &\as,  French  sel,  English  salt. 


40  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

that  they  all  divided  the  year  into  lunar  months,  and  counted  regu- 
larly up  to  more  than  100,11  according  to  the  decimal  system ;  and 
that  they  professed  a  worship  similar  to  that  depicted  for  us  in  the 
Eig-veda. 

"But,  as  a  counter-proof, — the  words  that  we  simply  encounter  both 
in  Greek  and  Latin,  but  which  do  not  exist  in  the  Sanscrit  in  their 
proper  sense,  and  of  which  only  a  remote  etymological  radical  can 
be  discovered,  become  witnesses,  in  their  own  turn,  for  the  progres- 
sions that  had  been  accomplished  in  Europe.  They  unfold  to  us 
what  had  been  the  acquirements  in  common,  which  the  Pelasgi  pos- 
sessed prior  to  their  complete  separation  into  Hellenic  and  into 
Italic  populations.12  We  thence  learn  how  it  is  that  from  this  Pe- 
lasgic  epoch  dates  the  establishment  of  regular  agriculture,  —  the 
cultivation  of  the  cereals,  of  the  vine  and  the  olive.  Finally,  those 
words  possessed  by  the  Latin  alone,  but  which  the  Greek  has  not 
yet  acquired,  display  the  progress  accomplished  by  the  Italic  popula- 
tions after  they  had  penetrated  into  the  Peninsula.  For  instance, 
the  word  expressing  the  idea  of  "  boat"  (navis,  Sanscrit  nans),  and 
which  was  subsequently  applied  to  a  "  ship"  (French  navire,  and  by 
us  preserved  in  navy,  &c),  belongs  to  the  three  languages  as  well  as 
that  which  renders  the  idea  of  "  oar."  The  Pelasgi  had,  therefore, 
imported  with  them  from  Asia,  acquaintance  with,  transportations 
by  water;  but  the  words  for  sail,  mast,  and  yard,  are  exclusively 
Latin.  It  was,  consequently,  the  Italic  people  who  invented  (for 
themselves)  navigation  by  sails;  and  this  circumstance  completes 
the  demonstration,  that  it  was  through  the  north  of  the  Italian 
peninsula  that  the  Pelasgi  must  have  penetrated  into  it.13 

We  are,  unfortunately,  still  perplexed  as  to  what  was  the  precise 
idiom  of  these  Pelasgi.  It  is,  perhaps,  in  the  living  tongue  of  the 
Albanians,  or  Skippetars,  that  the  least  adulterated  descendant  of 

11  The  names  of  numbers  are  the  same  up  to  a  hundred,  and  the  numeral  system  is  iden- 
tical. 

12  [My  colleague,  M.  Maury,  writes  me  that  his  Histoire  des  Religions  de  la  Grece  A  nlique 
(2  vols.  8vo.,  publishing  by  Ladrange,  Paris),  is  on  the  point  of  issue  —  Feb.  1857.  It  is 
the  fruit  of  long  years  of  research,  and  cannot  fail  to  throw  great  light  upon  ante-Hellenic 
events.  In  another  equally  -  interesting  field,  the  Melanges  Hisloriques  of  our  friend  M 
Ernest  Renan  (now  in  press)  will  explore  many  points  of  contact,  or  of  disunion,  between 
Sanscritic  and  Semitic  languages  and  history.  —  G.  R.  G.] 

13  [This  interesting  method  of  resuscitating  facts  long  entombed  in  the  ashes  of  ante- 
history,  confirms  the  accuracy  of  Dr.  David  F.  Weinland's  views,  "On  the  names  of 
animals  with  reference  to  Ethnology,"  in  a  paper  read  before  the  American  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science,  last  August.  But  I  know  of  it  only  through  a  very  condensed 
report  {New  York  Herald,  Aug.  26,  1856).  —  G.  R.  G.] 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  41 

this  idiom  must  be  sought  for.14  Notwithstanding  the  quantity  suf- 
ficiently noteworthy  of  Greek  and  Shlavic  words  that  has  penetrated 
into  the  Albanian,  a  grammatical  system,  nearer  to  Sanscrit  than  the 
Greek  affords,  is  encountered  in  it.  Such,  for  example,  is  the  de- 
clension of  the  determinate  adjective  through  a  pronominal  appendix, 
— which  is  observed  likewise  in  Sclavonic  tongues,  so  approximate, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  Sanscrit.  The  conjugation  of  the  verb  is  very 
distinct  from  that  in  Greek,  and  denotes  a  system  of  flexion  less 
developed. 

I  shall  say  nothing  about  the  neo-Latin  tongues,  born  from  the 
decomposition  of  Latin,  and  which  lost  little  by  little  the  synthetical 
character  and  the  flexions  of  their  mother.  I  will  but  remark,  that 
it  is  very  curious  to  establish  how  the  languages  issued  from  this 
stock  that  have  been  spoken  by  populations  whose  national  life  is 
very  slightly  developed,  are  those  which  present  an  analytical  con- 
stitution the  least  pronounced,  and  wherein  the  flexions  have  not 
became  so  greatly  impoverished.  The  Valaq  or  Roumanie,  the 
Rheto-Bomain  or  dialect  of  the  country  of  the  Grisons,  are  certainly 
more  synthetic,  and  grammatically  less  impoverished  than  French  or 
Spanish.  But,  at  the  same  time  that  these  tongues  have  preserved 
their  more  complex  character,  they  have  become  still  more  altered 
in  respect  to  their  vocabulary ;  and  one  feels  in  them  very  strongly 
the  influence  which  intermixture  of  races  exerts  upon  languages ; 
otherwise  called,  the  mingling  of  different  tongues.  The  verb  in  the 
Hheto-Eomain,  for  instance,  is  conjugated  now-a-days  in  the  future 
tense  and  in  the  passive  form  like  a  German  verb. 

The  Sclavonic,  or  Letto-Shlave,  tongues  decompose  themselves  into 
several  groups  that  correspond  to  different  degrees  of  linguistic 
development.  The  Lettish  group,  or  Lithuanian  (which  comprehends 
the  Lithuanian,  properly  so  called,  the  Borussian  or  ancient  Prus- 
sian, and  the  Lettia  or  Livonian),  answers  to  a  period  less  advanced 
than  the  Shlavic  branch;  for  example,  the  Lithuanian  substantive 
has  but  two  genders,  whilst  the  Shlave  recognizes  three.  The  Lithu- 
anian conjugation  does  not  distinguish  the  third  persons  of  the 
singular,  of  the  dual  and  the  plural.  The  Shlavic  conjugation,  on  the 
contrary,  clearly  distinguishes  seven  persons  in  the  plural  and  in  the 
singular.  But,  by  way  of  amends,  the  Lithuanian  keeps  in  its 
declension  the  seven  cases  and  the  dual,  so  characteristic  in  Sanscrit. 

14  See  on  this  subject  the  Eludes  Albanaises  of  M.  J.  von  Hahn  published  at  Vienna  in 
1854.  M.  A.  F.  Pott  has  made  the  observation,  that  the  Valaq  idiom  preserves  probably 
some  vestiges  of  this  antique  language  of  Illyria ;  the  use  of  the  definite  article,  notably, 
seems  in  Wallachian  to  proceed  from  sources  foreign  to  Latin. 


42  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

These  cases  are  even  occasionally  identical  with  those  of  this  last 
tongue.  The  Sclavonic,  or  Shlave,  idioms  properly  so  denominated, 
subdivide  themselves  into  two  branches,  that  of  the  south-west  and 
that  of  the  west.  The  first  comprises  the  Russian,  the  Bulgarian  which 
furnishes  us  with  the  most  ancient  Shlavic  form  (approximating  very 
much  to  the  idiom  termed  Cyrillic  or  ecclesiastical,  in  which  are 
composed  the  most  ancient  monuments  of  the  Christian  literature  of 
this  race),  the  IUyrian,  the  Serle  or  Servian,  the  Croat,  and  the  Slovine 
spoken  in  Carinthia,  in  Carniola,  a  part  of  Styria,  and  in  a  canton 
of  western  Hungary.  The  Shlavic  tongues  of  the  west  embrace  the 
Lekh  or  Polish,  the  Tcheq  or  Bohemian,  the  Sozab  or  Wendic  (popu- 
lar dialect  of  Lusace),  and  the  Polab, — that  has  disappeared  like  the 
ancient  Prussian,  and  which  was  spoken  by  the  Sclavonic  tribes  who 
of  yore  were  spread  along  both  banks  of  the  lower  Elbe. 

The  Germanic  languages  attach  themselves  (we  have  already  said), 
more  to  the  Zend  and  the  Persic  than  to  the  Sanscrit.  The  Persic 
and  Zend  are  part  of  a  group  of  tongues  that  is  designated  by  the 
name  of  Iranian  languages.  It  embraces  again  many  other  idioms, 
of  which  several  have  disappeared.  To  it  are  attached  notably  the 
Affghan  or  Pushtu,  the  Beloodchi  spoken  in  Beloodckistan,  the  Kurd, 
the  Armenian,  and  the  Ossete — which  seems  to  be  nothing  else  than 
the  language  of  those  people  known  to  the  ancients  by  the  name  of 
Albanian,  the  Aghovans  of  Armenian  authors.  This  narrow  bond 
between  the  Germanic  and  the  Iranian  languages  tells  us  plainly 
whence  issued  the  populations  which  spread  themselves  over  central 
Europe,  and  that  very  likely  drove  before  them  the  Celts.  The 
affinity  that  binds  these  Germanic  tongues  amongst  each  other,  — 
that  is  to  say,  the  ancient  Gothic,  or  dialects  of  the  German  properly 
so  called,  to  which  cling  the  Flemish  and  the  Dutch,  the  Prison  and 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  lastly  the  old  Icelandic  and  its  younger  sisters 
the  Danish  and  Swedish — is  much  closer  than  that  observable  between 
the  Shlavic  and  amongst  the  Pelasgic  languages.  Eour  traits  in  com- 
mon, as  Mr.  Jacob  Gbjmm  has  noticed,  attach  them  together,  viz : 
variation  of  sound,  which  the  Germans  call  "ablaut;"  metathesis,  or 
transposition ;  and  finally,  the  existence  of  two  different  forms  of 
verbs  and  of  nouns,  that  are  denominated  "strong  declension  or  con- 
jugation," and  "weak  declension  or  conjugation." 

An  attentive  comparison  of  the  laws  of  the  Sanscrit  grammar  and 
vocalization,  with  those  of  German  grammar  and  vocalization,  has 
revealed  some  curious  analogies  which  explain  those  resemblances 
that  had  been,  even  anciently,  perceived  between  German  and 
Greek. 

Celtic  languages  are  known  to  us,  unhappily,  only  through  some 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  43 

doubtless  very  degenerate  representatives  of  that  powerful  family, 
viz :  the  Gf-celic  or  Welsh,  and  the  Armorican  or  Bas-breton  (which  are 
in  reality  no  more  than  dialects  of  the  Kimric  tongue),  the  Irish, 
the  Erse  or  Gadhelic  idiom  spread  over  the  Scottish  Highlands,  and 
the  Manx  or  idiom  of  the  little  isle  of  Man,  —  not  forgetting  the  lost 
Cornish  dialect.  "We  hardly  know  anything  of  the  tongue  spoken 
of  erst  by  our  fathers,  the  Gauls  (G-aulois  or  Galls);  except  that  the 
small  number  of  words  remaining  to  us  suffices  to  classify  it  with  the 
same  family.  Of  all  the  branches  of  the  Indo-European  family  this 
Celtic  is,  in  fact,  the  one  whose  destinies  have  been  the  least  happy, 
and  the  most  confined.  Its  tongues  have  come  to  die  along  the 
shores  of  the  Ocean  that  opposed  an  impassable  barrier  to  renewed 
emigration  of  those  who  spoke  them.  Invaded  by  the  Latin  or 
German  populations,  the  Keltic  races  have  lost,  for  the  most  part, 
the  language  that  distinguished  them,  without,  on  that  account, 
losing  altogether  the  imprint  of  their  individuality. 

The  history  of  the  Indo-European  languages  is,  therefore,  the  surest 
guide  we  can  follow  in  endeavoring  to  re-construct  the  order  of  those 
migrations  that  have  peopled  Europe.  This  community  of  language 
that  unveils  itself  beneath  an  apparent  diversity,  can  it  be  simply  the 
effect  of  a  commonality  of  organization  physical  and  intellectual? 
The  inhabitants  of  Europe, — do  they  belong  solely  to  what  might 
be  termed  the  same  formation  ?  It  would,  if  so,  become  useless  to 
go  searching  in  Asia  for  their  common  cradle.  The  fact  is  in  itself 
but  little  verisimilar ;  but,  here  are  some  comparative  connections  of 
another  order  that  come  to  add  themselves  to  those  which  languages 
have  offered  us,  and  to  confirm  the  inductions  drawn  from  the  pre- 
ceding data. 

On  studying  the  mythological  traditions  contained  in  the  Yedas,  as 
well  as  in  the  most  ancient  religious  monuments  of  India  and  Persia, 
there  has  been  found  a  multitude  of  fables,  of  beliefs,  of  surnames  of 
gods  and  some  sacred  rites,  some  variants  of  which,  slightly  altered, 
are  re-encountered  in  the  legends  and  myths  of  antique  Greece,  of 
old  Italy,  of  Germany,  Scandinavia,  Russia,  and  even  of  England. 
It  is  only  since  a  few  years  that  these  new  analogies  have  been 
brought  to  light;  and  the  Journal  directed  by  two  distinguished 
Orientalists  of  Berlin,  MM.  Th.  Aufrecht  and  Adalbert  Kuhn, 
has  been  the  chief  vehicle  for  their  exposition.  One  of  the  first 
Indianists  of  Germany,  M.  Albert  Weber,  has  also  contributed  his 
portion  to  this  labor  of  (rapprochement)  comparison ;  of  which,  in 
France,  the  Baron  d'Eckstein  learnedly  pursues  the  application. 

I  have  already  said  that  the  names  of  gods  met  with  in  Greek  and 
Latin  indicate  to  us  a  worship  (culte)  among  the  Pelasgi  altogether 


44  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

similar  to  that  of  which  the  Big-veda  is  the  most  ancient  monument. 
It  cannot,  of  course,  be  expected  that  I  should  here  enumerate  all 
these  names.  I  will,  however,  select  out  of  their  multitude,  some  of 
a-nature  suited  to  cause  these  analogies  to  he  understood. 

The  God  of  Heaven  (or  of  the  sky)  is  called  by  the  Greeks  Zeus 
Pater  ;  and  let  us  here  notice  that  the  pronunciation  of  Z  resembles 
very  much  that  of  D,  inasmuch  as  the  word  Zeus  becomes  in  the  geni- 
tive Dios.  The  Latins  termed  the  same  god  Dies-piiter  or  Jupiter. 
How,  in  the  Veda,  the  God  of  Heaven  is  called  Dyauslipitar.  The 
Greeks  designated  the  sky  as  Ouranos,  and  invoked  it  as  a  supreme 
god.  And,  it  must  again  be  noted  that,  in  their  tongue,  the  V  does 
not  exist,  but  is  always  rendered  by  OU.  In  the  Veda,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  termed  Varouna.  The  Earth  always  receives — among 
the  Greeks,  the  Latins,  and  the  Germans, — the  epithet  of  "  mother ;" 
and  likewise  under  this  surname  is  it  invoked  in  the  Vedic  hymns. 

But  these  are,  after  all,  only  similitudes  of  names :  some  complete 
myths  connect  amongst  each  other  all  the  Germanic  populations. 
These  myths,  too,  have  become  invested,  amid  each  one  of  the  latter, 
with  a  physiognomy  slightly  distinct;  because  every  thing  in 
niythos  is  shifting  and  changeable :  and,  even  among  the  same  people, 
myths  modify  and  transform  themselves  according  to  times  and 
according  to  places ;  but,  a  basis, — a  substratum,  of  ideas  in  common 
remains ;  and  it  is  this  residue  which  permits  us  to  grasp  the  original 
relationship  of  beliefs.  Well, — we  might  cite  a  host  of  these  fables 
that  have  run  over  the  whole  of  Europe,  but  ever  preserving  the 
same  traits.     I  will  give  one  of  them,  just  by  way  of  specimen :  — 

Grecian  antiquity  has  recorded  various  legends  concerning  a  mar- 
vellous artisan  yclept  Aa/<5«Aos  (the  "  inventive")  who  occasionally 
becomes  confounded  with  the  God  of  fire,  personification  of  light- 
ning (and  the  thunderbolt),  Hepheestos ;  whom  we  call,  after  the  Latins, 
Vulcan.  The  Aryas  (proper  name  of  those  Arians  who  composed  the 
Sanscrit  Vedas)  also  adored,  as  a  blacksmith-god,  the  personified 
thunderbolt.  They  termed  him  T-wachtrei;  and  the  physiognomy  of 
this  personage  possesses  the  greatest  analogies  with  that  of  Vulcan. 
Tivaehtrei  is  called  the  "author  of  all  works ;"  because  fire  is  the 
grand  agent  of  human  industry ;  and  he  is  Ignipotens,  as  says  Virgil 
speaking  of  Vulcan.  And,  in  the  same  manner  that  this  divinity  had 
forged  the  thunderbolt  of  Jupiter,  and  executed  the  cup  out  of  which 
immortals  quaffed  ambrosia,  Twachter'  had  forged  the  thunderbolt 
of  Indra,  god  of  the  sky  (or  Heaven)  in  the  Vedic  pantheon ;  and 
was  the  maker  of  that  divine  cup  whence  was  poured  out  the  soma, 
— which  was,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  ambrosia  and  the  libation. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  45 

Fwachter'  has  for  assistants,  or  for  rivals,  the  Bibhavas,15 —  other 
divine  artists,  who  play  a  considerable  part  in  the  songs  of  the  Veda 
and  in  Hindostanic  history;  wherein  one  recognizes  numberless 
traits  common  to  the  Hellenic  legend  of  the  Cyclopians,  the  Cabiri, 
the  Telchines,  and  in  particular  to  that  of  Daedalus.  Now,  these  same 
legends  are  picked  up  here  and  there  from  different  points  of  Europe, 
in  localities  the  most  distant,  and  between  which  no  interchange  of 
ideas  could  anciently  have  occurred.  The  celebrated  blacksmith 
"Wieland,"  or  Velant,  so  famous  in  the  traditions  of  northern  Ger- 
many,— who,  in  Scandinavia,  is  termed  Volund — is  a  compound  of 
Vulcan  and  Daedalus,  no  less  than  another  heir  to  the  Vedic  tradi- 
tions about  Twachter'. 

The  adventure  so  classically-renowned  of  the  Cretan  hero,  and  of 
his  son  Icarus,  reproduces  itself,  with  but  trifling  variations,  in  that 
of  Volund.  He  is  also  shut  up  within  the  labyrinth ;  but  Scandi- 
navian tradition  no  longer  places  in  Crete  (Candia)  this  marvellous 
edifice.  It  is  on  an  island  named  "Savarstadr."  The  Greek  fable 
gives  to  Daedalus  wings,  in  order  that  he  may  escape  from  his 
prison.  In  the  story  of  the  people  of  the  north,  it  is  a  shirt  of 
feathers  with  which  he  clothes  himself.  His  brother  Eigil,  here 
substituted  for  Icarus,  wishes  to  try  the  power  of  this  feathery  dress ; 
and  perishes  like  the  son  of  Daedalus  —  victim  of  his  rashness. 

A  scholiast  teaches  us,  that  the  celebrated  Greek  voyager  Pytheas 
had  found  at  the  islands  of  ^Eolus,  now  the  Lipari-isles,  the  singular 
custom  of  exposing,  near  the  volcano  (Stromboli)  in  which  it  was 
believed  that  Vulcan  made  his  residence,  the  iron  that  one  desired 
to  see  fashioned  into  some  weapon  or  instrument.  The  rough  metal 
was  left  during  the  night  thus  disposed,  and  upon  returning  on  the 
morrow,  the  sword,  or  other  implement,  was  found  newly  manufac- 
tured. An  usage  of  this  kind,  founded  upon  a  similar  credence,  is 
spread  through  a  number  of  Germanic  countries.  It  is  no  longer 
Vulcan,  but  Wieland,  a  cripple  like  him  moreover,  who  becomes  the 
mysterious  blacksmith.  In  Berkshire  (England)  they  used  formerly 
to  show,  near  a  place  called  White-Horse  hill,  a  stone,  whereupon, 
according  to  the  popular  notion,  it  was  enough  to  deposit  a  horse- 
shoe with  a  piece  of  silver,  and  to  tie  near  it  the  animal  to  be  shod ; 
and,  on  coming  back,  the  operation  was  found  done.  The  marvel- 
lous farrier  Way  land- Smith,  as  he  was  called,  had  paid  himself  with 
the  silver  money ;  and  the  shodden  brute  was  ready  to  be  led  away. 
In  many  cantons  of  Germany,  analogous  stories  used  to  be  told :  only, 

15  On  this  point  consult  the  learned  work  of  M.  F.  Neve,  entitled  Essai  sur  U  myths  des 
Ribhavas,  Paris,  1847. 


46  ON     THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

the  name  of  the  invisible  blacksmith  underwent  changes,  and  imagi- 
nation embroidered  upon  the  common  web  some  particular  details. 

Wieland,  who  is  also  named  "  Geinkensekmid,"  is  associated  in 
certain  localities,  with  a  bull ;  wbich  recalls  to  mind  that  one  manu- 
factured by  Daedalus,  to  satisfy  the  immodest  passion  of  Pasiphae, 
the  "all-illumining"  spouse  of  Minos — whom  Hellenic  tradition 
makes  a  king  of  Crete,  but  who  is  encountered  both  amidst  the 
Arians  and  the  Germans.  Among  the  Aryas  he  bears  the  name  of 
Manou,  or  rather  of  Manus.  He  is  a  legislator-king ;  having  for  his 
brother  Yania,  the  god  of  the  dead;  just  as  Minos's  brother  was 
Pihadamanthus  (Rhada-»iaw-thus).  This  last,  as  well  as  Tama,  is  re- 
presented with  a  wand  in  his  hand,  and  judging  in  the  infernal 
regions.  Among  the  Germans,  Manus  is  called  Mannus.  He  is 
also  (a  man  and)  an  ancient  king,  who,  like  the  Indian  Manus,  is  an 
Adam,  the  first  author  of  mankind. 

I  must  refer  to  the  learned  work  of  M.  A.  Kuhn  those  who  wish 
to  penetrate  deeper  into  these  curious  comparisons.  The  glimpse  I 
have  just  given,  shows  how  much  of  authority  they  add  to  those 
analogies  that  the  comparative  study  of  languages  has  furnished  us. 
Our  German  philologists  have  felt  this,  inasmuch  as  they  insert,  in 
the  same  periodical  repertory,  mythological  researches  of  this  kind, 
purely  linguistic.  I  would  add,  that  such  comparative  examinations 
enable  us  to  comprehend  better  the  nature  and  the  history  of  the 
Hellenic  religion  in  particular,  and  the  religions  of  antiquity  in 
general.  This  method  yields  us  the  key  to  a  multitude  of  myths 
which  we  could  not  decipher  did  we  not  mount  up  to  their  Asiatic 
origines.     Allow  me  yet  again  to  offer  a  short  example. 

According  to  the  Grecian  fable,  Aomon  was  the  father  of  Ouranos. 
The  motive  for  this  filiation  had  not  until  now  been  pierced  through. 
"Why  should  the  most  ancient  of  the  gods,  their  supreme  father, 
have  had  an  "anvil"  for  his  own  father?  such  being  the  Greek 
signification  of  this  word.  Sanscrit  can  alone  tell  us,  —  as  M.  R. 
Eoth,  one  of  the  most  ingenious  and  skilful  Orientalists  of  Germany, 
has  remarked.  The  Sanscrit  form  of  this  Greek  name  is  Agman, 
and  the  word  signifies,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  "anvil"  and  "sky" 
(or  heaven).  The  myth  becomes  intelligible.  Here,  as  in  innumer- 
able other  cases,  the  god  receives  for  his  progenitor  another  personi- 
fication, from  the  same  part  of  nature  that  he  represents.  And,  in 
the  same  manner  that  Rhea  has  engendered  Demeter, — that  is  to  say, 
the  "mother-earth,"  because  Rhea  (as  the  meaning  of  her  name 
indicates)  is  a  personification  of  the  Earth ;  so,  likewise,  as  Helios 
(the  sun)  had  for  his  father  Hyperion,  that  is  to  say,  again  the  sun, — 
did  Ouranos   (the   sky)   receive   birth  from  Acmon, — whose   name 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  47 

has  the  same  acceptation.  But,  whilst  the  word  Acmon  passed  into 
Greek  with  the  sense  of  "  hammer," — against  which  that  of  "  anvil" 
was  easily  interchangeable — it  lost,  among  the  Hellenes,  the  meaning 
of  "  sky,"  and  thus  the  myth,  transported  into  Europe,  ceased  to 
possess  significance  any  more. 

In  the  presence  of  analogies  and  connections  so  conclusive,  it  is 
impossible  to  suppose  simply  that  a  population  of  the  same  race,  and 
with  the  same  fundamental  stock  of  language,  was  spread  from  India 
and  Persia  to  Britain  and  Erin :  we  must  necessarily  suppose  that  the 
peoples  coming  from  Asia  had  imported  into  Europe  their  idiom  and 
their  traditions.  Must  it  hence  be  admitted  that  this  portion  of  the 
earth  had  not  then  been  already  populated ;  and  that  those  Asiatic 
tribes,  which  took  the  leadership  of  this  long  defile  of  conquerors, 
found  nothing  before  them  but  solitudes  ? 

It  is  again  the  study  of  languages  that  will  furnish  us  with  the 
reply. 

I  have  stated  that  all  the  idioms  of  Europe  belong  to  the  Indo- 
European  stem ;  three  groups  (or  if  you  will,  three  languages),  form- 
ing the  only  exception ;  without  speaking,  be  it  well  understood,  of 
the  Turkish,  scarcely  implanted  on  this  side  of  the  Bosphorus,  and 
whose  introduction  dates  but  from  a  few  centuries ;  nor  comprising, 
either,  the  Maltese, — solitary  vestige  of  Saracenic  dominion  in  Italian 
lands. 

The  first  group  is  represented  by  the  Basque  tongue,  or  the  Eiskari, 
which  embraces  but  two  dialects.  The  second  is  the  Finnish  group, 
comprising  the  Lapponic,  the  Einnic  or  Suomi,  and  the  Esihonian 
spoken  in  the  northern  part  of  Livonia,  as  also  at  the  islands  of  (Esil 
and  Dago.  Lastly,  the  third  group  reduces  itself  to  the  Magyar,  or 
Hungarian,  which  links  itself  to  the  Finnish  group  through  an  indi- 
rect relationship. 

"We  know  how  the  Magyar  introduced  itself  into  Europe.  It  is 
the  tongue  of  the  ancient  Huns,  who,  mingling  with  the  populations 
of  Dacia  and  Pannonia,  gave  birth  to  the  Hungarians ;  but  we  are 
less  advanced  as  regards  what  concerns  the  history  of  the  Finnish 
and  the  Basque  languages. 

Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  who  devoted  himself  to  researches  of 
great  interest  upon  the  Basque  tongue,  has  shown  that  this  language 
had  of  yore  a  much  more  extensive  domain  than  the  little  corner  of 
land  by  which  it  is  now  confined.  Names  of  places  belonging  to 
the  whole  of  southern  France,  and  even  to  Liguria,  prove  that  a 
population  of  Euscarian  idiom  was  anciently  spread  from  the  Alps 
to  the  occidental  extremity  of  Spain.  These  people  were  the  Iberes, 
Iberians,  yonderers  ;  and  the  Basque  is  the  last  relic  of  their  tongue. 


48  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

The  labors  of  the  skilful  philologue  of  Beziers,  M.  Boudakd,  have 
put  the  finishing  stroke  in  bringing  this  fact  to  light. 

The  Celts,  or  Kelts,  encountered  before  them,  therefore,  the  Iberes ; 
whom  they  pushed  onward  into  the  south  of  Gaul,  where  we  find 
them  established  in  the  time  of  Caesar.  They  amalgamated  with 
them,  as  the  name  of  Celt-Iberia  teaches ;  and  very  certainly  in  Lan- 
guedoc  also,  no  less  than  in  Aquitania.  These  Iberians  —  a  nation 
lively  and  impressionable,  vain  and  stirring — may  well  have  infused 
into  the  Keltic  blood  that  element  of  restlessness  and  levity  which 
one  perceives  in  the  Gauls,  but  which  is  alien,  on  the  contrary,  to 
the  true  Kelt,  —  at  once  so  attached  to  his  traditions,  and  ever  so 
headstrong  in  his  ideas. 

The  Basque  tongue,  otherwise  called  Iberian,  resembles  in  nothing 
the  Indo-European  idioms.  It  is  "par  excellence"  a  polysynthetical 
language,  —  a  tongue  that,  in  its  organism,  reminds  one,  in  a  suffi- 
ciently-striking manner,  of  the  languages  of  America.  It  composes  "  de 
toutes  pieces"  the  idea-ivord;  suppresses  often  entire  syllables;  and,  in 
this  work  of  composition,  preserving  sometimes  but  a  single  letter  of 
the  primitive  word,  it  presents  those  adjunctive  particles  that  by  phi- 
lologists are  termed  postpositions — as  opposed  to  prepositions — which 
serve  to  distinguish  cases.  In  this  manner  is  it  that  the  Basque 
constructs  its  declension.  This  new  characteristic  re-appears  in 
another  great  family  of  languages  which  we  shall  discuss  anon,  viz : 
the  Tartar  tongues  belonging  to  central  Asia. 

The  Basque,  consequently,  denotes  a  very  primitive  intellectual 
state  of  the  people  who  occupied  western  Europe  previously  to  the 
arrival  of  the  Indo-Europeans ;  and,  were  it  allowable  to  draw  an 
induction  from  an  isolate  characteristic,  one  might  suppose  that  the 
Iberes  were,  as  a  race,  allied  to  the  Tartar. 

But  this  hypothesis,  daring  as  it  is,  receives  a  new  degree  of 
probability  from  the  study  of  the  second  group  of  European  lan- 
guages, foreign  to  the  Indo-Germanic  source,  viz :  the  Finnish  group. 

This  group  is  not  restricted  to  a  few  idioms  on  the  north-east  of 
Europe.  It  extends  itself  over  all  the  territory  of  northern  Russia 
even  to  the  extremity  of  Kamtsehatka.  Comparison  of  the  numerous 
idioms  spoken  by  tribes  spread  over  Siberia  has  revealed  a  common 
bond  between  them,  as  well  of  grammar  as  of  vocabulary.  These 
tongues,  which  might  be  comprehended  under  the  general  appellation 
of  Finno-  Japonic  (from  the  name  of  those  occupying  upon  the  map  the 
two  extremes  of  their  chain),  offer  this  same  characteristic  of  agglutina- 
tion that  has  just  been  signalized  in  the  Basque ;  but  in  a  much  less 
degree.  They  make  use  of  that  curious  S}rstem  of  postpositions 
which  appertains  also  to  the  ancient  idiom  of  the  Iberes.    Those  ter- 


CLASSIFICATION    OF     TONGUES.  49 

urinations  destined  to  represent  cases  are  replaced  by  prepositions 
distinct  from  the  word, — which,  in  our  languages,  precede,  on  the 
contrary,  the  words  of  which  they  modify  the  case.  It  must  be 
noted  that  the  apparition  of  these  postpositions  invariably  antecedes, 
in  the  gradual  formation  of  tongues,  the  employment  of  cases ; 
whereas,  prepositions  replace  these  when  the  tongue  becomes  altered 
and  simplified.  Cases  are  nothing,  indeed,  but  the  result  of  the 
coupling  of  the  postposition  to  words.  The  organic  march  of  the 
declension  presents  itself,  therefore,  throughout  the  evolution  of  lan- 
guages, in  the  following  manner,  viz :  at  first  the  root  (or  radical), 
ordinarily  monosyllabic ;  next,  the  radical  followed  by  postpositions, 
—  corresponding  to  the  period  of  agglutination;  again,  the  radical 
submitted  to  the  flexion, — corresponding  to  the  ancient  period  of  our 
Indo-European  tongues ;  and,  finally,  the  preposition  followed  by  the 
radical,  —  corresponsive  to  the  modern  period  of  these  same  lan- 
guages. It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  postposition  (in  relative  age) 
never  returns  subsequently  to  the  preposition,  —  any  more  than  can 
the  milk-teeth  grow  again  in  an  old  man  after  the  loss  of  his  molars. 

Thus,  then,  the  age  of  the  Finnish  tongues  and  of  the  Basque  is 
fixed.  They  were  idioms  of  analogous  organization,  and  of  which 
the  arrest  of  development  announces  a  sufficiently  feeble  degree  of 
intellectual  power.16  The  brethren  of  the  Aryas  and  Iranians,  upon 
penetrating  into  Europe,  had  only,  therefore,  to  combat  populations 
living  in  a  state  analogous  to  that  in  which  we  find  the  hordes  of 
Siberia, — species  of  Ostiaks  or  of  Vogouls,  of  Tcheremiss  or  of  Mord- 
vines.  "With  their  intellectual  superiority,  the  people  coming  from 
occidental  Asia  had  no  need  of  being  very  numerous  to  vanquish 
such  barbarous  tribes ;  with  whom,  doubtless,  they  frequently  amal- 
gamated, but  of  whom  they  ever  constituted  the  aristocracy.  This 
warrior  and  haughty  spirit  of  those  Asiatic  conquerors  preserved 
itself  above  all  among  the  Germans,  and  it  is  to  be  perceived  also 
amid  the  Latins  and  the  Greeks. 

Let  it  not,  however,  be  imagined  that,  beneath  the  influence  of  the 
neighborhood  which  new  migrations  created  for  them,  such  tribes 
of  Finnish  stock  thrown  off  to  the  north-east  of  Europe,  and  those 

16  The  study  of  the  vocabulary  of  the  Finnish  tongues,  and  even  that  of  the  Tartarian, 
proves  to  us  that  those  populations  were  wanting  in  a  quantity  of  knowledge  that  we  find, 
from  the  very  beginning,  amidst  the  Indo-European  populations,  and  which  the  former  were 
afterwards  forced  to  borrow  from  the  latter.  For  example,  the  name  of  salt,  in  all  the 
idioms  of  that  family  as  well  as  in  Hungarian,  expressed  by  a  derivative  of  the  Sanscrit, 
Greek,  or  Latin  name.  Indeed,  it  is  certain  that  the  use  of  salt  remained  for  a  long  time 
unknown  to  the  inhabitants  of  Northern  Europe ;  and  that  Christian  II,  king  of  Denmark, 
had  gained  over  the  Swedish  peasants  by  bringing  to  them  this  precious  condiment. 

4 


50  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

Iberian  peoples  repulsed  to  the  south-west,  have  remained  absolutely 
stationary.  Their  languages  tell  us  the  contrary ;  because  these  lan- 
guages have  improved :  but  such  perfectioning  has  not  been  able  to 
step  beyond  certain  bounds.  The  Finnic  spoken  in  Finland,  for  in- 
stance, has  drawn  nearer  to  tongues  a  flexions  (with  flexions) ;  but 
never  has  it  been  able  to  attain  that  degree  of  force,  of  clearness  and 
energy,  which  makes  the  merit  of  our  Indo-European  idioms. 

As  concerns  sounds,  notwithstanding  their  homogeneity,  the  Fin- 
nish tongues,  —  or,  to  qualify  them  more  exactly,  the  Ougro-Tartar 
languages — vary  considerably.  There  are  some  very  soft  ones,  like 
the  Suomi  or  Finlandish ;  and  some  very  harsh,  like  the  Magyar ; 
but  a  principle  of  harmony  dominates  them.  This  principle  is 
especially  perceptible  in  the  Suomi.  Indeed,  this  idiom  seeks  above 
all  for  sweetness  and  euphony.  It  avoids,  in  consequence,  mono- 
syllabic radicals,  and  nearly  always  attaches  to  the  root  a  final  vowel 
that  bears  no  accent.  Hence  M.  Schleicher  has  remarked  how  this 
gives  to  the  words  of  this  tongue  the  measure  of  a  "trochee."17 

We  meet  again  with  this  harmonic  tendency  equally  in  the  Tartar 
tongues,  which  the  "ensemble"  of  their  characteristics  and  words 
attaches  also  as  closely  to  the  Ougro-Japonic  languages,  as  the  Tartar 
type  attaches  itself  to  the  Finnish,  or  Ougrian,  through  the  interme- 
diacy  of  the  Tungouse  type.  The  separation  is  not  more  decided 
(tranoMe)  between  the  races  of  Siberia  and  those  of  central  Asia, 
than  between  the  idioms  which  they  speak.  The  Mongol,  the  Mand- 
ohou,  the  Ouigour,  the  Turkish,  are  not  fundamentally  distinct  from 
the  Finnish  tongues ;  and  this  explains  why  some  philologers  had 
been  struck  with  the  resemblance  between  Turkish  and  Hungarian. 
"We  are  here  referring  to  the  primitive  Turkish,  to  that  which  was 
spoken  in  Turkestan,  and  of  which  some  dialects  yet  subsist  in  cer- 
tain parts  of  Russia  and  of  Tartary ;  because,  as  to  that  which  is  now 
European  Turkish,  it  is  altered  almost  as  much  as  the  Turkish  blood 
itself.  It  is  imbued  with  Arabic  and  Persian  words ;  it  has  become 
singularly  softened  down :  in  the  same  manner  that  the  Asiatic 
Turks,  by  dint  of  crossing  themselves  through  marriage  with  Georgian 
girls,  with  Greek,  Arab,  Persian  (occasionally  with  an  Abyssinian 
or  negress),  Sclavonian  and  other  women,  have  ended  by  taking  a 
physiognomy  altogether  different  from  that  of  their  ancient  progeni- 
tors,—  which  has  been  gaining  in  nobleness  and  regularity  what  it 
loses  in  singularity.  European  blood  has  so  well  infiltrated  itself 
into  that  of  the  Hunnic  hordes  which  conquered  the  country  situate 
between  the  Danube  and  the  Theis,  that  it  is  now-a-days  impossible 

B  The  Greeks  and  the  Latins  called  trochee  a  foot  composed  of  along  and  a  short  syllable. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  51 

to  descry  any  more  of  the  Mongol,  anything  of  that  hideousness  bo 
celebrated  among  the  Huns,  in  the  expressive  traits  of  the  present 
Magyar. 

One  may,  then,  designate  this  vast  family  of  languages  under  the 
denomination  of  Ougro-  Tartar.  All  of  them,  at  divers  degrees,  are 
subject  in  their  words  to  the  law  of  euphonic  transformations  of  vow- 
els in  the  particles  suffixed,  that  is  to  say,  joined  on  at  the  ends  of 
words.  In  order  that  nothing  should  come  to  injure  the  clearness 
of  the  radical's  pronunciation,  everything  is  combined  so  that  its 
vowel  remains  immutable ;  and  hence,  accordingly  as  this  vowel  is 
hard,  soft,  or  intermediary,  the  vowels  of  the  suffixes  are  submitted 
to  modifications  having  for  object  to  prevent  the  asperity  or  the 
heaviness  of  the  latters'  sound  from  smothering  the  sound  of  the 
radical.  This  law,  so  remarkable,  is  precisely  the  reverse  of  what 
happens  in  languages  a  flexions  (with  flexions),  for  the  case ;  because 
in  them  it  is  the  suffixes  that  act  upon  and  influence  the  vowels  of 
the  radical. 

All  these  tongues  proceed  equally  through  the  path  of  agglutina- 
tion. The  radical  is,  indeed,  at  bottom  monosyllabic.  Its  almost  con- 
stant junction  to  a  particle-suffix  makes  it,  in  reality,  a  dissyllable, 
whose  monosyllabic  origin  is  nevertheless  recalled  by  the  presence 
of  the  accent  upon  the  first  syllable.  Never  does  the  radical  suffer 
any  foreign  syllables  to  place  themselves  at  its  head  (or  commence- 
ment) ;  and  we  still  behold  in  Magyar  how,  notwithstanding  that  it 
has  largely  undergone  the  influence  of  the  Indo-European  tongues  by 
which  it  is  surrounded — as  in  Finnish,  as  in  Turkish,  as  in  Mongol, — a 
word  can  never  begin  with  two  consonants ;  and  lastly,  the  generical 
employment  of  the  postposition  to  designate  the  relations  of  the 
substantive.  The  number  of  these  postpositions  varies  according  to 
the  development  and  the  richness  of  the  tongue.  In  Suomi,  for 
example,  the  adjunctive  particles  are  very  numerous,  not  less  than 
fifteen  being  counted,  which  makes  in  reality  fifteen  cases ;  without 
including  the  nominative,  that  forms  itself  without  suffix :  and  still, 
notwithstanding,  the  Finnish  does  not  recognize  the  distinction  of 
one  of  the  most  natural  cases,  viz :  the  accusative,  which  it  renders 
through  indirect  cases. 

The  whole  of  these  languages,  maugre  their  apparatus  of  forms, 
are  nevertheless  poor.  It  is  clear  that  this  heap  of  postpositions  results, 
in  reality,  from  a  powerlessness  of  the  mind  to  reduce  to  simple  and 
regular  expressions  the  relations  of  words  betwixt  each  other.  We 
must  not,  therefore,  wonder  at  finding,  in  the  Ougro-Tartar  tongues, 
almost  always  the  same  terminations,  as  well  in  the  plural  as  in  the 
singular. 


52  ON    THE     DISTKIBTTTION    AND 

One  may  partition,  according  to  their  degree  of  development,  these 
tongues  into  four  groups, — the  Ougrian  group,  that  comprises  the 
Ostiak,  the  Samoyede,  the  Vogoul,  and  divers  other  dialects  of  Sibe- 
ria :  the  Tartar  group  properly  so  called,  which  comprehends  the 
Mongol  that  occupies  in  it  the  lower  rung,  the  Ou'igour,  the  Mand- 
chou,  and  the  Turkish,  whose  position  is  on  the  highest :  the  Japonic 
group,  to  which  belongs  the  Corean ;  and  the  Finno-Ougrian,  that 
embraces  the  Suomi  or  Einlandic,  the  Esthonian,  the  Lapponic,  and 
the  Magyar ;  all  which  latter  tongues  are  superior  to  those  of  the  pre- 
ceding groups,  as  concerns  the  grammatical  system  and  ideology. 

The  Finno-Ougrian  family  prolongs  itself  into  North  America, 
where  we  encounter  its  most  widely-spread  branches  in  the  most 
boreal  latitudes.  And  in  like  manner  it  is  to  be  noted,  that  the  Es- 
kimaux  race,  and  the  septs  thinly  scattered  over  those  frozen  coun- 
tries, approximate  in  their  type  to  that  of  the  Ougrian. 

The  idioms  spoken  in  the  entire  sub-Arctic  region  present  the 
same  uniformity,  therefore,  as  the  fauna  of  this  region.18  Indeed,  we 
know  that  animal  species  are  found  to  be  very  nearly  the  same  along 
the  boreal  latitudes  both  of  the  Old  and  the  ISTew  world. 

Whilst  one  body  of  the  great  Indo-European  migration  from  Asia 
was  advancing  by  detachments  into  our  temperate  countries,  another 
corps  descended  through  the  defiles  of  the  Hindoo-Kosh,  and  by  the 
basin  of  the  Indus,  into  the  vast  plain  of  the  Ganges ;  and  spread 
itself  bit  by  bit  over  the  whole  peninsula,  of  which  this  river  laves  the 
northern  provinces.  This  is  what  we  are  taught  not  merely  by  the 
traditions  of  the  Hindoos,  but  also  by  the  study  of  the  languages 
spoken  in  this  peninsula.  In  fact,  while  we  encounter,  at  the  north 
of  Hindostan,  idioms  emanating  from  the  Sanscrit  family,  we  meet, 
further  to  the  south,  with  an  "  ensemble  "  of  tongues,  absolutely 
foreign  to  it,  as  well  in  vocabulary  as  in  grammar. 

These  languages  appertain  all  to  the  same  family,  and  they  are 
denominated,  after  the  Hindoos,  by  the  epithet  of  Dravirian  or  Dra- 
vidian.  Hence,  the  Arian  tribes  had  been  preceded  in  India  by  popu- 
lations of  a  wholly  distinct  family ;  in  the  same  manner-  that  the 
sisters  of  the  former  had  encountered  in  Europe  another  race,  differ- 
ent likewise  from  themselves.  And,  what  is  remarkable,  the  two 
categories  of  languages  spoken  by  the  autochthones  of  Europe  and 
the  indigenous  peoples  of  Hindostan  belong,  in  classification,  to  lin- 
guistic families  having  many  traits  in  common. 

The  Dravidian  tongues  subdivide  themselves  into  two  groups ;  one 

18  Agassiz,  "  Sketch  of  the  Natural  Provinces  of  the  Animal  World,  and  their  relation  to 
the  different  Types  of  Man" — in  Nott  and  Ghddon's  Types  of  Mankind,  7th  edition,  1856, 
pp.  lx. — xiii. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  53 

the  northern,  and  the  other  southern.  The  first  embraces  the  lan- 
guages spoken  by  the  dispersed  native  tribes,  whom  the  descendants 
of  the  invading  Aryas  have  repelled  into  the  Vindhya  mountains, 
viz :  the  Male  or  Radjmahali,  the  Uraon,  the  Cole,  and  the  Khond 
or  Gonde.  The  second  comprises  the  Tamoul  or  Tamil,  the  Telougou 
or  Telenga  (called  also  Kalinga),  tbe  Talava,  the  Malayalam,  and  the 
Carnatic  or  Carnataka.  As  the  populations  at  the  south  of  the  penin- 
sula bave  preserved,  during  a  longer  time,  their  national  indepen- 
dence, and  even  have  attained  a  civilization  of  their  own,  one  can 
understand  that  the  idioms  of  the  southern  group  must  be  far  richer 
and  more  developed  than  those  of  the  northern  group.  Nevertheless, 
despite  this  inequality  of  development,  one  discovers,  in  a  striking 
manner,  the  same  characteristics  in  the  whole  of  these  tongues. 
Another  branch  of  the  same  family,  which  extends  to  the  north-east 
of  the  basin  of  the  Ganges,  indicates  to  us  through  its  presence,  that 
a  fraction  of  the  indigenous  population  was  thrown  towards  the 
north-east ;  so  that,  it  must  now  be  admitted,  the  great  Dravidian 
nation,  cut  through  its  centre  (by  the  intrusive  Aryas),  was,  like  the 
primitive  population  of  Europe,  driven  off  to  the  two  opposite  extre- 
mities of  its  vast  territory.  The  Bodo  and  the  Dhimal  are  the  two 
principal  representatives  of  this  cluster  separated  from  the  stem, 
whose  most  advanced  branches  continue  onward  until  they  lose  them- 
selves in  Assam. 

All  the  characters  appertaining  to  the  Ougro-Japonic  tongues  are 
found  again  in  these  Dravidian  languages,  of  which  the  Gonde  may 
be  considered  to  have  preserved  to  us  their  more  ancient  forms.  All 
manifest  in  a  high  degree  the  tendency  to  agglutination.  The  law 
of  harmony,  that  we  have  perceived  just  now  in  the  Finnish  lan- 
guages, re-appears  here  with  the  same  character.  Tbe  foundations  of 
the  grammatical  system,  which  are  identical  in  all  these  tongues, 
doubtless  constitute  them  as  separate  families  from  Tartarian ;  but  this 
(Dravidian)  family  is  very  close,  certainly,  to  those  idioms  spoken  by 
the  Tartars.  The  same  contrasts  exist,  as  regards  the  vocalization, 
between  the  Ougro-Japonic  and  the  Dravidian  tongues.  The  Mag- 
yar may  be  compared  to  that  Dravidian  idiom  richest  in  consonants, 
— for  example,  to  the  Toda  or  Todara,  which  is  spoken  by  an  ancient 
aboriginal  tribe  established  in  the  Nilgherri-hills  ;  and  the  Finnish, 
with  the  Japonic,  correspond  in  their  softness  to  the  Telougou  talked 
at  the  south-east  of  Hindostan. 

These  Dravidian  populations  were  spread  even  to  the  islands  of 
Ceylon,  the  Maldives  and  the  Laquedives ;  inasmuch  as  the  idioms 
there  still  spoken  attach  themselves  also  to  the  Dravidian  group. 

Comparative  philology  demonstrates  to  us,  therefore,  that  a  popu- 


54  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

lation  in  race  very  approximate  to  the  Tartar,  and  which  was,  con- 
sequently, itself  allied  to  the  Finnish  race,  did  precede  the  Aryas  in 
old  Hindostan. 

One  must  not  judge  of  the  intellectual  and  social  condition  of 
these  ahorigines  from  the  literary  movement  that  has  heen  wrought 
in  the  hody  of  the  Tamoul,  which  was  the  counterblast  of  that  grand 
intellectual  movement  represented  to  us  by  the  Sanscrit,  and  was 
certainly  due  to  the  Aryan  influence.  In  order  to  judge  what  these 
primitive  populations  of  Hindostan  had  been,  one  must  go  and  study 
their  scattered  remains.  This  has  been  done,  quite  in  recent  times, 
by  the  English,  to  whom  we  owe  some  most  interesting  details  about 
these  antique  tribes.  These  debris  of  primeval  Indian  nationality  are 
now  distributed  in  three  distinct  parts  of  the  peninsula.  The  first 
are  met  with  in  the  heart  of  the  Mahanuddy,  as  far  as  Cape  Comorin ; 
being  the  Bheels,  the  Tudas,  the  Meras,  the  Coles,  the  Gondes  or 
Khonds,  the  Soorahs,  the  Paharias,  &c.  The  second  inhabit  the 
northern  section  towards  the  Himalaya;  such  are  the  Radjis  or 
Doms,  and  the  Brahouis.  The  third  occupy  the  angle  that  sepa- 
rates the  two  peninsulas  of  India,  and  which  is  designated  by  the 
name  of  Assam,  as  well  as  that  mountainous  band  constituting  the 
frontier  between  Bengal  and  Thibet. 

The  whole  of  these  tribes  live  even  now  as  they  lived  very  many 
centuries  ago.  They  are  agricultural  populations,  who,  from  time  to 
time,  clear  with  fire  a  portion  of  the  jungle  or  the  forest.  The  word 
which,  amongst  these  people,  renders  the  idea  of  culture,  signifies 
nothing  else  than  the  cutting  down  of  the  forest.  The  Aryas,  on  the 
contrary,  were  a  pastoral  people ;  and  in  India,  as  in  many  other 
countries,  the  shepherds  triumphed  over  the  farmers.  Everything, 
furthermore,  announces  among  these  Dravidian  people  much  gentle- 
ness of  character,  which  is  again  a  distinctive  trait  of  the  Mongols 
and  of  the  Finnish  populations.  Their  worship  must  have  been 
that  naturalistic  fetishism  which  remains  the  religion  of  the  Bodos, 
the  Dhimals,  and  the  Gondes.  They  adored  objects  of  nature.  They 
had  deities  that  presided  over  the  different  classes  of  beings  and  the 
principal  acts  of  life ;  and  they  knew  naught  of  sacerdotal  castes 
or  of  any  other  regular  organization  of  worship.  Some  usages, 
preserved  even  at  this  day  among  several  of  these  indigenous  tribes, 
show  us  that  woman,  at  least  the  wife,  enjoyed  among  them  a  very 
great  degree  of  independence. 

The  facts  accord,  then,  with  linguistics  to  show  us  how,  within 
that  portion  of  Asia  comprehended  between  the  Euphrates  and 
Tigris,  and  the  Indus,  there  had  existed  a  more  intelligent  and 
stronger  race,  that,  at   a  very   early  day,  divided   itself  into  two 


CLASSIFICATION"     OF     TONGUES.  55 

branches,  of  which  one  marched  into  Europe,  and  the  other  into 
Hindostan ;  both  encountering,  in  each  new  country,  some  popula- 
lations  of  analogous  race,  and  possibly  allied,  whom  they  subju- 
gated, and  of  whom  they  became  the  superior  caste — the  aristocracy. 
The  two  inferior  castes  of  India,  the  Vaisyas  and  the  Soudras,  are 
but  the  descendants  of  such  vanquished  nations,  —  the  anterior  type 
of  India's  autochthones  being  even  yet  represented  in  a  purer  state 
by  some  of  the  Dravidian  "hill-tribes"  above  described. 

But,  alongside  of  this  grand  and  powerful  race  of  Aryas  and 
Iranians,  there  appears,  from  the  very  remotest  antiquity,  another 
race,  whose  territorial  conquests  were  to  be  less  extended  and  less 
durable,  but  of  whom  the  destinies  have  been  glorious  also.  It  is  the 
Semitic  (Shemitic,  Shemitish)  or  Syro-Arabian  race.  From  the  banks 
of  the  Euphrates  to  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  to  the 
extremity  of  the  Arabic  peninsula,  this  race  was  expanding  itself. 
Its  great  homogeneity  springs  from  the  close  bonds  which  combine 
together  the  different  dialects  of  its  tongue.  These  dialects  are  the 
Aramsean,  the  Hebrew,  the  Arabic,  the  Chaldasan  and  the  Ethiopic. 

By  their  constitution,  all  these  idioms  distinguish  themselves 
sharply  from  the  Indo-European  languages.  They  possess  neither 
the  same  grammatical  system,  nor  the  same  verbal  roots.  In  Se- 
mitic languages,  the  roots  are  nearly  always  dissyllabic ;  or,  to  speak 
with  philologists,  triliteral,  that  is  to  say,  formed  of  three  letters :  and 
these  letters  are  consonants ;  because,  one  of  the  most  distinctive 
characteristics  of  the  Semitic  tongues  is,  that  the  vowel  does  not 
constitute  the  fundamental  sound  in  a  word.  Here  vowels  are 
vague,  or,  to  describe  them  otherwise,  they  have  not  any  settled 
fixed-sound,  distinct  from  the  consonant.  They  become  inserted,  or 
rather,  they  insinuate  themselves  between  strong  and  rough  conso- 
nants. Nothing  of  that  law  of  harmony  of  the  Ougro-Tartar  or 
Dravidian  tongues,  nothing  of  that  sonorousness  of  Sanscrit,  of  Greek, 
and  neo-Latin  languages,  —  exists  in  the  Semitic.  Man  speaks  in 
them  by  short  words,  more  or  less  jerked  forth.  The  process  of 
agglutination  survives  in  them  still;  not,  however,  completely,  as 
in  the  Basque.  There  are  many  flexions  in  them,  but  these  flexions 
do  not  constitute  the  interior  of  words. 

Since  the  publication  of  M.  Ernest  Kenan's  great  labors  upon  the 
history  of  Semitic  languages,  we  are  made  perfectly  acquainted  with 
the  phases  through  which  these  languages  have  passed. 

They  have  had,  likewise,  their  own  mould,  which  they  have  been 
unable  to  break,  even  while  modifying  themselves.  The  Rabbinical, 
the  "ISTahwee"  or  literal  Arabic,  in  aspiring  to  become  languages 
more  analytical  than  the  Ohaldee  or  the  Hebrew,  have  remained,  not- 


56  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

withstanding,  imprisoned  within  the  narrow  hars  of  an  imperfect 
grammar.  This  is  the  reason,  as  M.  Ernest  Eenan  has  remarked, 
that, —  whilst  the  Indo-European  tongues  continue  still  their  life 
in  our  day,  as  in  past  times,  upon  all  points  of  the  globe  —  Semitic 
languages,  on  the  contrary,  have  run  through  the  entire  circle  of 
their  existence.  But,  in  the  more  circumscribed  course  of  their  life, 
they  have  presented  the  same  diversities  of  development  established 
for  all  the  preceding  families ;  and,  at  the  same  time  that  the  Ara- 
maean which  comprises  two  dialects, — the  pagan  Aramaean  or  Sabian, 
and  the  Christian  Aramaean  or  Syriac — is  poor,  without  harmony, 
without  multiplied  forms,  ponderous  in  its  constructions,  and  devoid 
of  aptitude  for  poetry,  the  Arabic,  on  the  contrary,  distinguishes 
itself  by  an  incredible  richness. 

The  Semitic  race,  of  which  the  birth-place  must  be  sought  in 
that  peninsular  space  shut  in,  at  the  north  by  the  mountains  of 
Armenia,  and  at  the  east  by  those  which  bound  the  basin  of  the  Tigris, 
has  not  gone  outside  of  its  primitive  father-land.  It  has  only  travelled 
along  the  borders  of  the  Mediterranean,  as  is  proved  to  us  by  the 
incontestable  Semiticism  of  the  Phoenician  tongue,  whose  inscriptions 
show  it  to  have  been  very  close  to  the  Hebrew.  Africa  has  been 
almost  the  only  field  for  its  conquests.  Phoenician  colonies  bore  a 
Semitic  idiom  into  the  country  of  the  ISTumidians  and  the  Mauri; 
later  again,  the  Saracenic  invasion  carried  Arabic  —  another  tongue 
of  the  same  family — into  the  place  of  the  Punic,  which  last  the  Latin 
had  almost  dispossessed.  In  Abyssinia,  the  G-heez  or  Ethiopic  does 
not  appear  to  be  of  very  ancient  introduction,  and  everything  leads 
to  the  belief  that  it  was  carried  across  the  Red  Sea  by  the  Joktanide 
Arabs,  or  Himyarites,  whose  language,  now  forgotten,  has  left  some 
monuments  of  its  existence,  down  to  the  time  of  the  first  Khalifates, 
in  divers  inscriptions. 

The  Semites  found  in  Africa  upon  their  arrival  a  strong  popula- 
tion, that  for  a  long  period  opposed  itself  to  their  conquests.  This 
population  was  that  of  the  Egyptians ;  whose  language  now  issues  gra- 
dually from  the  deciphering  of  the  hieroglyphics,  and  which  left,  as 
its  last  heir,  the  Coptic,  still  living  in  manuscripts  that  we  collect 
with  avidity. 

This  Egyptian  was  not,  however,  an  isolated  tongue.  The  Berber 
— otherwise  miscalled  the  "Kabyle,"  which  name  in  Arabic  only 
means  "tribe,"  —  studied  of  late,  has  caused  us  to  find  many  conge- 
ner words  and  "  tournures."  And  this  Berber  (whence  Barbary)  itself, 
yet  spoken  by  the  populations  Amazirg,  Shillouh,  and  Tuareg,  was 
expelled  or  dominated  by  the  Arabic.  Its  domain  of  yore  extended 
even  to  the  Canary-isles.     Some  idioms  formerly  spoken  in  the  north 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  57 

of  Africa  attached  themselves  to  it  through,  bonds  of  relationship 
more  or  less  close.  The  presence,  throughout  the  north  of  Africa, 
of  inscriptions  in  characters  called  Tifnag,  and  which  seem  to  have 
been  conceived  in  Berber  language,  makes  known  to  us  that  this 
tongue  must  have  reigned  over  all  the  territories  of  the  Barbaresque 
States ;  and  was  most  probably  that  of  the  JSTumidians,  Gsetulians,  and 
Garamantes. 

Egyptian  civilization  was  very  profuse  in  aspirates.  Its  gramma- 
tical forms  denote  a  more  advanced  period  than  that  of  the  Semitic 
tongues :  its  verb  counts  a  great  number  of  tenses  and  moods,  formed 
through  the  addition  of  prefixes  or  of  suffixes.  But  its  pronoun  and 
its  article  have  still  an  entirely  Semitic  physiognomy,  notwithstand- 
ing that  the  stock  of  its  vocabulary  is  absolutely  foreign  to  that  of 
those  languages. 

We  have  already  caused  it  to  be  remarked  that,  in  the  Galla  (of 
Abyssinia)  one  re-encounters  the  Semitic  pronoun.  The  influence 
exerted  at  the  beginning  by  the  Semites  over  the  race  to  which  the 
Egyptians  were  proximate — and  whom  we  will  call,  with  the  Bible, 
Hamitic —  was,  therefore,  in  all  likelihood,  very  profound.  When 
the  Semites  entered  into  relations  with  the  Hamites,  the  language  of 
the  latter  must  have  been  yet  in  that  primitive  stage  in  which  essential 
grammatical  forms  might  still  be  borrowed  from  foreign  tongues. 
An  intermixture  sufficiently  intimate  must  have  occurred  between 
the  two  races ;  above  all  in  the  countries  bordering  upon  the  two 
territories.  Such  is  what  occurred  certainly  for  the  Phoenicians, 
whose  tongue  was  Semitic,  whilst  the  stock  of  population  belonged, 
nevertheless,  to  the  Hamitic  race.  For  Genesis  gives  Canaan  as  the 
son  of  Ham  ;  and  Phoenicia,  as  every  one  knows,  is  "  the  land  of  Ca- 
naan." The  whole  oriental  region  of  Africa  as  far  as  the  Mozam- 
bique coast  affords  numerous  traces  of  Semitic  influence.  Along- 
side of  the  Gheez,  that  represents  to  us,  as  E.  Penan  judiciously 
writes  it,  the  classical  form  of  the  idiom  of  the  Semites  in  Abyssinia, 
several  dialects  equally  Semitic  arrange  themselves  ;  but  all  more  or 
less  altered,  either  by  the  admixture  of  foreign  words,  or  through  the 
absence  of  literary  culture.  Amid  these  must  be  placed  the  Amhario, 
the  modern  language  of  Abyssinia. 

Semitic  tongues  underwent,  in  Africa,  the  influence  of  the  lan- 
guages of  that  part  of  the  world ;  and,  in  particular,  of  those  of  the 
Hamitic  family,  spoken  in  the  countries  limitrophic  to  that  inha- 
bited by  the  Semites. 

African  languages  cannot  all  be  referred  to  the  same  family  :  but 
they  possess  among  themselves  sundry  points  of  resemblance.  They 
constitute,  as  it  were,  a  vast  group,  whence  detaches  itself  a  family 


58  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

that  may  be  called  the  African  family  "  par  excellence,"  and  which 
extends  from  the  Occidental  to  the  Oriental  coasts,  re-descending 
even  into  the  Austral  portion. 

All  the  languages  that  form  part  of  this  group,  and  in  general  the 
tongues  of  the  whole  of  this  portion  of  the  globe,  possess  one  system 
of  vocalization,  otherwise  termed,  a  powerful  phonology;  and  some- 
times even  a  disposition  almost  rhythmical,  which  gained  for  them,  on 
the  part  of  some  philologists,  the  name  of  alliteral  tongues.     Thus, 
although  the  consonants  in  them  be  often  aspirated,  and  affect  odd  pro- 
nunciations, they  are  never  accumulated  together.     Double  letters  are 
rare,  and  in  certain  tongues  unknown.     For  example,  in  Oaffr,  the 
vowels  have  a  pronunciation  clear  and  precise.     In  the  major  number 
of  the  languages  of  Southern  Africa,  and  in  some  few  of  those  of  Cen- 
tral Africa,  the  words  always  terminate  with  vowels,  and  present  regu- 
lar alternations  of  vowels  and  consonants.    This  is  above  all  true  of  the 
Caffrarian  languages.19     M.  d'Avezac  writes  about  the  Yebou,  or  Ebo, 
tongue  spoken  in  Guinea :  in  regard  to  euphony,  this  language  may 
be  considered  as  one  of  the  softest  in  the  world ;  vowels  abound  in 
it ;  and  it  is  in  this  respect  remarkable  that  (except,  perhaps,  some 
rare  and  doubtful  exceptions)  not  merely  all  the  words,  but  even  all 
the  syllables  end  in  vowels :  the  consonants  offer  no  roughness  in 
their  pronunciation ;  and  many  are  articulated  with  a  sort  of  quaint- 
ness  (mignardise),  which  renders  it  difficult  to  seize  them,  and  still 
more  difficult  to  express  graphically  by  the  letters  of  our  alphabet.20 
Among  some  other  African  tongues,  on  the  contrary,  the  termination 
is  ordinarily  nasal.     Amid  the  majority  of  the  languages  of  northern 
and  midland  Africa,  the  words  finish  with  a  vowel.     Such  is  what  one 
observes  in  the  Woloe,  the  Bulom,  the  Temmani,  the  Tousnali,  and  the 
Fasoql. 

As  concerns  the  system  proper  of  sounds,  and  the  vocabulary, 
they  vary  greatly  in  African  languages :  and  the  harmony,  sonorous- 
ness, and  fluidity  of  speech,  frequently  meet,  in  certain  sounds,  with 
notable  exceptions.  It  is  the  character  of  these  various  sounds  that 
may  serve  as  a  basis  for  the  classification  of  the  tongues  of  Africa. 
All  present  compound  vowels  and  consonants ;  amongst  which,  m  p, 
m  b,  are  of  the  frequentest  employment.  The  duplex  consonants 
n  k,n  d,  appear  likewise.  Finally,  in  some  African  idioms,  one  en- 
counters the  consonants  dg,  gb,  Jcb,  bp,  bm,  Tee,  Jch,  rh,  pmb,  b  lm.™ 

19  See  on  this  subject  The  Kafir  Language;  comprising  a  sketch  of  its  history,  by  the  Bev. 
John  W.  Appleyard  (King  William's  Town,  1850),  p.  65  seqq. 

20  Memoires  de  la  Sociele  Bthnologique  de  Paris,  ii.  part  2,  p.  50. 

21  In  these  illustrative  notations  no  attempt  is  made,  of  course,  to  follow  any  of  the 
diversified  "standard  alphabets"  recently  devised  for  the  use  of  Missionaries.  On  this 
question  of  the  expediency  of  such  alphabets,  and  their  success  so  far,  I  coincide  entirely 
■with  the  criticism  of  a  very  scientific  friend,  Prof.  S.  S.  Haldeman  {Report  on  the  Present 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  59 

Aspirates  and  the  sibilants  are  not  rare,  any  more  than  the  vise, 
simple  or  compound,  of  the  iv .  Among  some  languages  of  this 
family,  the  palatal  and  dental  letters  are  confounded,  or  at  least  are 
not  clearly  distinguishable.  Several  tongues  are  completely  devoid 
of  certain  letters :  for  instance,  the  Qdji,  and  divers  others,  are  want- 
ing in  the  letter  I;  and  replace  it,  whenever  they  meet  with  it  in  what 
foreign  words  they  may  appropriate,  by  r,  or  d,  or  n. 

The  accordances,  of  different  parts  of  the  discourse,  are  often 
regulated  by  a  euphonic  system  which  is  felt  very  strongly  in  sundry 
idioms,  notably  in  the  Yazouba.  The  radicals  are  more  frequently 
monosyllabic.  It  is  the  addition  of  this  radical  with  a  modifying 
particle  (which  is  most  commonly  a  prefix)  that  gives  birth  to  the 
other  words.  The  relations  of  cause,  of  power,  of  reciprocity,  of  re- 
flectivity, of  agent,  &c,  as  well  as  those  of  time,  number,  and  sex,  are 
always  expressed  through  a  similar  system.  The  radicals,  thus  united 
to  formative  particles,  become,  in  their  turn,  veritable  roots,  and  con- 
stitute the  source  (souche)  of  new  words.  One  can  comprehend,  never- 
theless, how  very  imperfect  is  such  a  system,  for  defining  clearly  the 
relations,  at  once  so  multiplied  and  so  distinct,  existing  between 
words.  There  exist  above  all  some  for  which  African  languages 
are  of  extreme  poverty;  for  example,  the  ideas  of  time  and  motion. 
And  this  character  approximates  them,  in  a  manner  rather  striking, 
to  the  Semitic  tongues.  As  in  these  latter  idioms,  African  languages 
do  not  distinguish  the  present  from  the  future,  or  the  future  from 
the  past :  otherwise,  they  express  both  these  tenses  by  one  and  the 
same  particle.  The  penury  and  the  vagueness  of  particles  indica- 
tive of  the  prepositions, — or  to  speak  with  grammarians,  of  the  pre- 
fixes to  prepositions — are  again  far  more  pronounced  in  the  majority 
of  African  idioms  than  amidst  the  Semitic.  They  enunciate,  by  the 
same  particle,  ideas  as  different  as  those  of  movement  towards  a 

State  of  our  knowledge  of  Linguistic  Ethnology,  made  to  the  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  Aug.  1856).  My  experiences  of  the  hopelessness  of  arriving  at 
any  exact  countervails  in  European  characters  for  Arabic  intonations  alone,  so  as  to 
enable  a  foreigner,  who  has  not  heard  Arabs  speak,  even  to  pronounce  correctly,  render  me 
very  sceptical  as  to  the  ultimate  possibility  of  transcribing,  through  any  one  series  of 
Alphabetic  signs,  the  infinitude  of  distinct  vocalizations  uttered  by  the  diverse  groups  of 
human  types;  which  articulations,  as  Prof.  Agassiz  has  so  well  remarked,  take  their 
original  departure  from  the  different  conformations  of  the  throat  inherent  in  the  race-cha- 
racter of  each  distinct  group  of  mankind. 

Should  any  one,  however,  desire  to  put  this  universal  "  Missionary  Alphabet"  through 
an  experimentum  crucis,  he  need  not  travel  far  to  test  its  applicability  to  remote,  abnormal,  and 
barbarous  tongues,  by  trying  its  efficacy  upon  three  cognate  languages  close  at  hand.  Let 
a  Frenchman,  wholly  unacquainted  with  English,  transcribe  into  the  "  Missionary  Alpha- 
bet," a  short  discourse  as  he  hears  it  from  the  mouth  of  a  Londoner.  Then,  pass  his  manu- 
script on  to  a  German  (of 'course  knowing  neither  French  nor  English),  and  let  him  read  it 
aloud  to  an  Englishman.     "  Le  diable  mime  ne  s'y  reconnaitrait  pas  !'■'  —  G.  R.  G.] 


60  ON"     THE    DISTRIBUTION     AND 

point,  or  the  departing  from  a  point ;  of  position  in  a  place,  toward 
a  place,  or  near  a  place.  The  same  poverty  is  observable  in  the 
conjunctions :  copulative  particles  being  employed  frequently  to 
render  the  idea  of  possession  and  of  relationship  ;  those  which  ex- 
press the  idea  of  connexion  being  often  replaced  by  pronouns  or  by 
definite  particles. 

Per  contra,  African  languages,  as  well  as  the  Semitic,  are  ex- 
tremely rich  in  respect  to  the  changes  (voies)  of  the  verb,  that  is  to  say, 
in  forms  indicating  the  manner  in  which  a  verb  may  be  employed. 
These  changes — which  are  so  numerous,  notably  in  Arabic — are  not  the 
less  so  in  the  majority  of  African  languages;  beyond  all,  in  the  princi- 
pal group  that  extends  from  the  Mozambique  coast  to  Caffraria  on  one 
side,  and  to  Congo  on  the  other.  Although  these  changes  are  com- 
posed, in  the  major  portion  of  such  tongues,  by  the  addition  of  pre- 
fixes, they  form  themselves  in  others  through  the  aid  of  suffixes. 

The  number  of  these  changes  varies  singularly  according  to  the 
tongues.  Thus,  in  the  Sechuana  language,  and  in  the  Temneh,  there 
exist  six  changes ;  in  the  Sooaheeli  seven,  in  the  Caffr  eight,  and  in 
the  Mpongwee  eleven. 

To  give  an  idea  of  the  opulence  of  these  changes  in  a  single  verb, 
we  borrow  an  illustration  from  the  language  of  Congo.  Sal  a,  to 
labor;  s  alii  a,  to  facilitate  labor ;  salisia,  to  labor  with  somebody ; 
salanga,  to  be  in  the  habit  of  laboring ;  salisionia,  to  labor  the  one 
for  another;  sal  any  an  a,  to  be  skilful  at  laboring. 

All  verbal  roots  are  susceptible  of  similar  modifications  through 
the  help  of  certain  particles  that  may  be  added  to  them.  In  this 
method,  by  the  sole  use  of  the  verb,  an  expression  is  attained  indicating 
whether  the  action  be  rare,  frequent,  difficult,  easy,  excessive,  &c.  And 
this  richness  of  changes  does  not  prevent  the  language  froni  being, 
as  regards  its  verbs,  and  viewed  in  respect  to  their  number,  of  great 
poorness.  For  instance,  — the  idiom  of  Congo,  from  which  we  have 
just  borrowed  the  proof  of  such  a  great  richness  of  changes,  does  not 
possess  any  word  to  express  the  idea  of  "living,"  but  is  obliged  to 
say  in  place,  to  conduct  ones  soul,  or  being  in  one's  heart. 

Another  very  characteristic  trait  of  the  majority  of  African 
tongues  is,  that  they  do  not  recognize  the  distinction  of  genders, 
after  the  manner  of  the  Semitic  idioms  or  the  Indo-European.  They 
distinguish,  on  the  contrary,  as  two  genders,  the  animate  and  the  in- 
animate ;  and  in  the  class  of  animate  beings,  the  gender  man  or  in- 
telligent, and  the  gender  brute  or  animal.  Others  of  these  languages, 
in  lieu  of  distinguishing  numbers  after  the  fashion  of  Indo-European 
and  Semitic-  idioms,  recognize  only  a  collective  form  which  takes  no 
heed  of  genders,  and  a  plural  form  that  applies  itself  to  beings  of  the 


CLASSIFICATION"    OF     TONGUES.  61 

same  genders.  This  is  a  particularity  that  we  shall  again  encounter 
in  the  clicking  languages,  or  the  Hottentot. 

We  do  not  possess  sufficient  elements  as  yet  to  give  a  complete 
classification  of  the  languages  of  Africa.  It  is  only  since  the  recent 
publication  of  the  Polyglotta  Africana  of  Mr.  S.  W.  Koelle  that  we 
have  acquired  an  idea  of  the  reciprocal  affinities  which  link  together 
the  tongues  of  Western  Africa. 

The  classification  proposed,  however,  by  Koelle  is  freely  intro- 
duced into  the  following  schedule. 

I. — ATLANTIC  languages,  or  of  the  north-west  of  Africa. 

These  tongues  have,  with  those  of  southern  Africa,  for  a 
common  characteristic,  the  mutation  of  prefixes.  They 
comprise  the  following  groups,  viz : 

1st. — The  Fouloup  group,  which  embraces  the  Fouloup  or 
Floupe,  properly  so  called,  spoken  in  the  country  of  the 
same  name, — the  Filham,  or  Filhol,  spoken  in  the  canton 
which  surrounds  the  city  of  Buntoun;  this  town  is  situate 
upon  the  river  Koya,  at  about  three  weeks'  march  from  the 
Gambia. 

2d. — The  Sola  group,  which  comprises  the  Bola  talked  in  the 
land  of  Gole  and  that  of  Bourama,—  the  Sarar,  idiom  of  the 
country  of  this  name  stretching  along  the  sea  to  the  west  of 
Balanta  and  to  the  north  of  the  district  where  the  Bola  is 
spoken,  —  the  Pepil  spoken  in  the  isle  of  Bischlao  or  Bisao. 

3d. — The  Biafada  group,  or  Dchola,  spoken  at  the  west  of 
JSTkabou  and  north  of  Nalou, — the  Padschade,  which  is  an 
idiom  met  with  at  the  west  of  Koniadschi  and  east  of 
Kabou. 

4th. — The  Bulom  group,  comprehending  the  Baga,  a  tongue 
spoken  by  one  of  the  popoulations  of  this  name  which 
inhabits  the  borders  of  the  Kalum-Baga,  eastward,  to  the 
islands  of  Los,21  —  the  Timne  talked  at  the  east  of 
Sierra-Leone, — the  Bulom  spoken  in  the  country  of  this 
name  that  bounds  on  Timne, — the  Mampua,  or  Manpa 
Bulom,  called  also  Scherbo,  idiom  of  the  region  extending 
westward  of  the  Ocean,  between  Sierra-Leone  and  the  land 
of  Bourn, — the  Kisi,  spoken  west  and  north  of  Gbandi,  and 
east  of  Mende. 
II. — MANDINGO  family — spread  over  the  north-west  of  Upper 
Soodan. 

22  It  is  unknown  to  what  family  of  tongues  belong  the  idioms  of  the  other  populations 
termed  Baga,  who  dwell  upon  the  banks  of  the  Rio-Nunez  and  Rio-Pongas. 


62  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

This  very  extended  family  comprehends  the  Mandingo, 
properly  so  termed,  or  better  the  Mende', — the  Kabunga, 
Mandingo  dialect  spoken  in  the  land  of  Kabou, —  and 
several  other  dialects  of  the  same  language,  such  as  the 
Tokonka,  dialect  of  Toro ;  the  Dchalunka,  dialect  of  Fouta- 
djalon ;  the  Kankanka,  dialect  of  Kankan ;  the  Bambara, 
the  Kono,  talked  westwards  and  northwards  of  the  Kisi; 
the  Vei,  in  the  country  of  this  name  situate  to  the  east  of 
the  Atlantic  and  north  of  Gbandi,  which  embraces  several 
dialects,  viz :  the  Tene,  spoken  in  the  land  so  called,  that 
has  Souwekourou  for  its  capital ;  the  Gbandi,  spoken  at  the 
north  of  Gula  and  at  the  west  of  Nieriiva;  the  Landoro, 
talked  west  of  Limba;  the  Mende,  spread  over  the  west 
of  Kono  and  the  Kisi,  and  east  of  Karo;  the  Gbese, 
idiom  of  the  borders  of  the  river  Nyua;  the  Toma,  called 
likewise  Bouse,  spoken  in  the  land  of  the  same  name 
situated  to  the  south  of  that  of  the  Gbese;  and  the  Gio, 
talked  westward  from  Fa. 
EX— UPPER-GUINEAN— that  is,  the  languages  of  the  Pepper, 
Ivory,  Gold  and  Slave,  coasts,  decompose  themselves  into 
three  groups,  viz : 

1st. — The  Kroo  tongues,  comprising  the  Dewoi,  spoken  on 
the  banks  of  the  river  De,  or  St.  Paul's ;  the  Bassa,  talked 
in  a  portion  of  the  Liberian  territory ;  the  Era,  or  Kroo, 
spread  south  of  the  Bassa  along  the  coast;  the  Krebo, 
spoken  in  a  neighboring  canton ;  the  Gbe,  or  Gbei,  whose 
domain  lies  east  of  the  Great  Bassa. 

2d. — The  languages  of  Dahomey,  of  which  the  principal  are 
the  Dahome,  or  Popo  ;  the  Mahe,  spoken  eastward  of  the 
Dahome ;  and  the  Hwida,  talked  in  the  country  of  that 
name,  located  to  the  south  of  the  GeUfe  islands. 

3d. — The  languages  Akou-Igala,  embracing  the  numerous 
dialects  of  the  speech  of  the  Akou,  among  which  the 
Yozouba,  spoken  between  Egba  and  the  Niger, — and  the 
Igala,  language  of  the  country  of  that  name — are  the  most 
important.23  "We  shall  revert  further  on  to  the  Yozouba. 
IV.  — The  languages  of  the  north-west  of  UPPER  SOODAN  divide 
themselves  into  four  groups : 

1st.  —  The  group  Guzen,  represented  chiefly  by  the  idiom  of 
a  very  barbarian  people,  the  Guzescha,  who  inhabit  to  the 
west  of  Ton  ; 

a  The  Tebou,  of  which  M.  D'Avezac  has  published  the  grammar  [Mimoires  de  la  Socieie 
Etlmologique  de  Paris,  II,  part  2,  pp.  106  seqq.),  appertains  to  this  group. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF     TONGUES.  63 

2d.  —  The  group  Legba,  which  embraces  the  Legba  and  the 

Kiamba  ; 
3d.  —  The  group  Koama,  to  which  belongs  the  Bagbalan  ; 
4th.  —  And  lastly,  the  group  Kasm,  spoken  westward  of  the 

land  of  the  Gfuzescha. 

V.  — The  tongues  of  the  DELTA  of  the  Niger  are  divided  into  three 

groups :  —  the  first  represented  by  the  Ibo  dialects,  —  the 
second  by  the  Egbele  and  several  other  idioms, — the  third 
by  the  dialect  of  Okouloma,  the  name  of  a  maritime  dis- 
trict near  the  country  of  the  Ibo  and  that  of  Outcho. 

VI.  —  The  NUPE  family,  or  languages  of  the  basin  of  the  Tchadda, 

—  a  family  embracing  nine  idioms,  of  which  the  principal 
are  the  ]STup:e,  or  Tatba,  spoken  in  a  country  neighboring 
Raba  on  the  Niger ;  and  the  Goali,  or  Gbali,  talked  to  the 
east  of  the  ISTupe. 

VII. — The  family  of  CENTAL-AFRICAN  languages  is  composed 
of  two  groups : 
1st.  —  The  tongues  of  Bornotl,  which  comprise  also  those  of 
the  Kanam,  and  the  Budouma,  spoken  in  the  lake-isle  of 
that  name.  The  main  language  of  Bornou  is  the  Kanouri, 
which  attaches  itself  by  close  relationship  to  the  three 
tongues  of  Guinea,  —  the  Ashantee,  the  Fantee,  and  the 
Odji. 
2d.  —  This  group  comprehends  the  Pika,  or  FiKA,  and  the 
Bode  dialects  spoken  west  of  Bornou. 

VHT.  —  The  WOLQE,  or  JIOLOF,  spoken  by  the  populations  of 
Senegambia,  distinguishes  itself,  with  sufficient  sharpness, 
from  all  the  preceding  tongues ;  and  offers  a  grammatical 
system  that  has  more  than  one  trait  in  common  with  the 
Semitic  languages. 

IX. — In  the  same  region,  another  family  of  tongues  has  the  E00- 
LAH,  or  PEULE,  for  its  type ;  one  dialect  of  which  is 
spoken  by  the  Fellatahs,  and  very  probably  also  by  the 
Hausa,  or  Haousans.  The  vocabulary  of  these  divers  idioms, 
and  notably  that  of  the  Peule,  has  presented  a  remarkable 
analogy  with  the  Malayo-Polynesian34  languages,  of  which 
we  shall  treat  anon.  It  seems,  therefore,  that  the  Peule 
family  might  not,  perhaps,  be  attachable  to  African  tongues. 
The  Wolof,  although  constituting  a  separate  family,  ap- 
proaches  in   certain   points   the  Yozouba,  spoken   to  the 

24  Gustave  d'Eichthal,  ffisloire  el  Origine  des  Foulahs  ou  Fellans,  Paris,  1841  (Tirage  & 
part  de  l'Extrait  des  Memoires  de  la  Societe  Ethnologique). 


64  ON    THE     DISTRIBUTION    AND 

north  of  the  Bight  of  Benin,  —  between  the  2d  and  3d  de- 
gree of  W.  long.,  and  the  6th  and  10th  degree  of  IS.  latitude. 
The  Wolof  demarcates  itself  by  its  final  inflexions.  To  it 
other  idioms,  seemingly,  have  to  be  attached :  such  as  the 
Bidschago,  or  Bidshoro,  which  is  spoken  in  the  island  of 
Wun,  —  the  Gadschaya,  idiom  of  a  tribe  called  also  Sehe- 
rule,  or  Serawouli,  —  and  lastly  the  Goura. 

X.  —  Another  group,  which  is  characterized  by  initial  inflexions,  is 

spread  over  the  basin  of  the  Gambia,  and  is  represented  by 
the  Landoma,  that  is  spoken  in  the  land  of  KaJcondi,  —  and 
the  Nabou,  used  in  the  canton  of  Kahondan. 
The  Wolof  verb  is  susceptible  of  seventeen  modifications, 
that  consist  in  adding  to  each  radical  one  or  two  syl- 
lables, and  which  extend  or  restrict  its  acceptation.  It  is 
something  like  the  forms  of  the  Arabic  verb.  The  article 
follows  the  substantive,  and  embodies  itself  with  it,  as  in 
agglutinate  languages.  The  plural  article  exhibits  equally 
an  especial  characteristic  that  makes  it  participate  of  a 
demonstrative  pronoun.  In  general,  the  Wolof  offers,  in  its 
phonology,  that  same  harmonical  disposition  which  belongs 
to  all  the  African  languages. 

XI.  —  Although  the  Wolof  approximates  to  the  YOZOUBA  more 

than  to  any  other  African  tongue,  these  two  idioms  still  re- 
main separated  by  a  difference  sufficiently  defined.  The 
Yozouba  possesses,  in  its  grammatical  system,  a  great 
degree  of  perfection  and  regularity.  One  observes  in  it  an 
"  ensemble  "  of  prefixes  complete  and  regular,  that,  upon 
joining  themselves  to  the  verb,  give  birth  to  a  multitude  of 
other  words  formed  through  a  most  simple  process.  The 
radical  thus  passes  on  the  abstract  idea  of  action  into  all 
derivative  concrete  ideas ;  and  thus  reciprocally  by  the  addi- 
tion of  a  simple  prefix,  a  noun  becomes  a  possessive  verb. 

Another  peculiarity  of  the  Yozouba  is,  that  the  same  ad- 
verb varies  in  form  and  even  in  nature  according  to  the 
species  of  words  it  qualifies. 

The  Yozouba  system,  notwithstanding  its  individuality,  con- 
nects itself  tolerably  near  with  that  of  the  tongues  of 
Congo.  The  M'pongwe,  for  example,  spoken  on  the  Gaboon 
coast,  forms  its  verbs  by  adding  a  monosyllabic  prefix  to  the 
substantive ;  by  opposition  to  certain  Senegambian  languages, 
such  as  the  Mandingo,  in  which  they  employ  suffixes  to 
modify  the  sense  of  the  verb  or  the  noun. 
XXI.  —  The  CONGrO-languages  appertain  to  that  great  formation  of 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  65 

African  tongues  of  which  we  treated  ahove,  and  that  divide 
themselves  into  many  groups,  united  incontestably  by  close 
bonds. 

1st.  —  The  first  group  is  that  of  the  tongues  of  Congo ;  the 
whole  of  them  characterized  by  the  initial  flexion.  They 
embrace  the  languages  of  the  tribes  named  Atam,  of  which 
one  of  the  chiefest  is  the  TJdom,  spoken  in  a  country  of  this 
name,  which  has  Ebil  for  its  capital, — the  languages  of  Mo- 
ftos-tribes,  that  subdivide  themselves  into  several  groups, 
embracing  a  great  number  of  idioms, — the  tongues  of  Congo 
and  of  Angola  that  comprise  three  groups ;  the  first,  repre- 
sented above  all  by  the  Mbamba  ;  the  second,  by  the  Ba- 
huma,  or  Mobuma;  and  the  third,  by  the  JSPgola,  speech  of 
Angola. 

2d. — The  second  group,  comprehends  the  toDgues  of  South- 
West  Africa,  viz :  the  Kihiau,  that  also  forms  its  verbs  by 
means  of  prefixes,  and  attaches  itself  very  nearly  to  the 
Congo-languages.  It  appears  to  identify  itself  with  the 
MuNTOU-tongue,  spoken  by  the  Veiao,  whom  one  encounters 
in  the  country  of  Knyas,  about  two  months'  journey  west 
from  the  Mozambique  coast.  To  this  group,  likewise,  be- 
longs the  Marawi,  the  Niamban,  and  many  other  languages. 

3d. — The  third  group  is  represented  by  the  Souahilee-tongues ; 
comprising  the  Souahili  properly  so-called,  spoken  by  the 
inhabitants  of  the  coasts  of  Zanzibar;  and  the  languages 
of  neighboring  peoples  who  dwell  to  the  south  of  the  Galla- 
country;  such  as  the  Wanika,  the  Okaouafi,  the  "Wakamba. 
A  good  deal  of  the  BjHiAtr-language  is  met  with  in  the  Sou- 
ahili ;  which  indicates  well  the  affinity  of  the  two  groups. 

4th.  —  The  fourth,  the  group-Caffr,  comprehends  the  Zoulou, 
or  Caffr  proper, — the  Temneh,  the  Sechuana,  the  Damara, 
and  the  Kiniea.  All  these  languages  offer  the  same  organ- 
ism, and  a  great  richness  of  changes  (votes)  together  with  an 
extreme  poverty  of  verbs. 
Xl  II.  —  The  tongues  of  the  preceding  formation  approximate  in  a 
very  singular  manner,  as  regards  certain  points  of  their 
organism,  to  that  family  that  may  be  termed  HAMITIC 
(from  Khime,  Chernmia,  the  ancient  native  name  of  Egypt); 
and  which  has  for  its  type  the  Egyptian,'  of  which  the 
Coptic  is  but  a  more  modern  derivative.  To  it  may  be 
attached,  on  the  eastern  side,  the  Galla  ;  and  on  the  western, 
the  Berber. 

The  Egyptian  is  known  to  us  from  a  high  antiquity,  thanks 
5 


66  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

to  its  hieroglyphical  system  of  writing,  of  which  the  employ- 
ment mounts  up  to  at  least  3500  years  before  our  era.     This 
writing, — wherein  are  beheld  the  figured  and  metaphysical 
representations  of  objects  (mostly  indigenous  to  the  Nile) 
gradually  passed  into  the  state  of  signs  of  articulation — 
permits  us  to  assist,  as  it  were,  at  the  formation  of  speech. 
Through  the  use  of  these  signs,  one  seizes  the  first  appa- 
rition of  verbal  forms,  as  well  as  of  a  host  of  prepositions. 
The  basis  of  Egyptian  seems  to  be  monosyllabic;  but  the 
employment  of  numerous  particles  very  soon  created  many 
dissyllables.     This  language  recognizes  two   articles,  two 
genders,  two   numbers.     The  verb   through   its   conjuga- 
tions,— which  is  are  made  by  the  aid  of  prefixes  and  suffixes, 
and  that  counts  many  changes, — participates  more  of  the 
Indo-European  grammatical  system  than  of  the  Semitic. 
Egyptian  vocalization   seems   to  have   been  very  rich  in 
aspirates. 
This    linguistic    family,    to   which   the    Egyptian    belongs, 
would  appear  to  have  been  very  widely  extended  at  the 
beginning.     The  Berber,  vulgarice  Kabyle,  now  almost  re- 
duced to  the  condition  of  a  "patois,"  has  a  tolerably  rich 
literature,  and  comprehends  several  very  distinct  dialects, 
viz :  the  Algerian  Berber,  spoken  by  the  Kabail  —  moun- 
tain tribes  of  the  Atlas  —  imbued  with  Arabic  words ;  the 
Mozabee,  the  Shillouh,  the  Zenatiya  of  the  province  of 
Constantine,  and  the  Towerga,  or  Touarik. 
XIV,  — The   HOTTENTOT   family  of  tongues  —  or   "langues   1 
Klies,"  cliceing  languages  —  is  characterized  by  the  odd 
aspiration,  so  designated,  which  mingles  itself  (as  a  sort  of 
gluching)  in  the  pronunciation  of  the  greater  number  of 
words.     Hottentot  languages  bear,  above  all  in  the  conju- 
gation of  their  verbs,  the  character  of  agglutination.     Like 
Semitic  tongues,  they  are  deprived  of  the  relative  pronoun. 
They  distinguish  two  plurals  for  the  pronoun  of  the  first 
person,  the  one  exclusive  and  the   other  inclusive;   the 
former  excluding  the  idea  of  the  person  to  whom  a  dis- 
course is  addressed ;  and  the  latter,  on  the  contrary,  inclo- 
sing it.     In  their  nouns,  there  exist  two  genders  in  the  sin- 
gular,, and  three  in  the  plural  number,  — this  third  one, 
called  common,  has  a  collective  value.     It  follows  that  when 
an  object  be  designated  in  the  singular,  its  gender  always 
becomes  indicated.     These  tongues  distinguish  three  num- 
bers, but  they  are  unacquainted  with  the  case ;  whilst  the 


CLASSIFICATION    OP    TONGUES.  67 

adjective  remains  completely  indeclinable,  and  takes  neither 
the  mark  of  gender  nor  of  number. 
This  family  of  clicking  languages  comprehends  the  Hottentot, 
or  Quaiquai,  —  and  the  Bosjesman  dialects,  ISTamaqua  and 

KOEANA. 

Notwithstanding  its  strange  phonological  system,  the  family 
of  Hottentot  tongues  is  not  altogether  so  profoundly  dis- 
tinct from  African  languages,  as  one  might  be  tempted  to 
suppose  at  first  sight.  It  is  incontrovertible  that  these 
sounds,  in  nature  at  one  and  the  same  time  nasal  and 
guttural,  which  we  term  Kliks,  constitute  a  special  charac- 
teristic ;  but  the  foundation  of  the  grammatical  forms  in 
Hottentot  idioms  is  met  with  among  the  tongues  of  Africa. 
Thus,  the  verb  presents,  like  them,  a  great  richness  of 
changes :  it  has  a  form  direct,  negative,  reciprocal,  causative ; 
and  all  these  voies  are  produced  by  the  addition  of  a  particle 
to  the  end  of  the  verbal  radical.  Their  double  plural,  a 
common  and  a  particular,  is  a  trait  which  assimilates  them 
to  the  Polynesian  and  even  to  the  American  languages. 
The  double  form  of  the  first  person  plural,  indicating  if  the 
personage  addressed  be  comprised  in  the  "we,"  or  is  ex- 
cluded from  it — writes  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt — has  been 
again  met  with  in  a  great  number  of  American  tongues, 
and  had  been  assumed  until  now  to  be  an  especial  characte- 
ristic of  these  languages.  This  character  is  encountered, 
however,  in  the  majority  of  the  languages  that  we  are  here 
considering ;  in  that  of  the  Malays,  in  that  of  the  Philip- 
pine isles,  and  in  that  of  Polynesia.  In  Polynesian  tongues, 
it  extends  even  to  the  dual;  and  such,  moreover,  is  its 
particular  form,  in  them,  that,  were  we  to  guide  ourselves 
by  logical  considerations  merely,  it  would  become  neces- 
sary to  view  these  tongues,  as  being  the  cradle  and  the 
veritable  father-land  of  this  grammatical  form.  Outside 
of  the  South  Sea,  and  of  America,  I  know  of  it  nowhere 
else  than  among  the  Mandchoux.  Since  Wilhelm  von 
■  Humboldt  penned  these  words,  the  same  grammatical  pecu- 
liarity, which  exists  in  the  Malgache  (of  Madagascar),  has 
been  discovered  in  an  African  tongue,  —  the  VEi-language. 
African  languages  present,  therefore,  to  speak  properly,  but 
a  very  feeble  homogeneity.  The  same  multiplicity  of 
shades,  that  is  particularly  observed  among  the  Blacks, 
reappears  in  their  idioms. 
On  studying  the  grammars  and  the  vocabularies  of  the 
latter,  one  seizes  the  tracing-thread  of  those  numberless 


68  OK    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

crossings  which  have  made,  of  the  branches  of  the  Negro- 
race,  populations  very  unequal  in  development  of  faculties, 
and  in  intelligence  exceedingly  diverse.  One  perceives  a 
Semitic  influence  in  the  speech,  as  one  sometimes  discovers 
it  in  the  type  of  face.  The  Hottentots,  who  are  more  dis- 
tinct from  Negro-populations  than  any  other  race  of  Austral 
Africa,  separate  themselves  equally  through  their  tongue. 
The  Foulahs  and  the  "Wolofs,  so  superior  to  the  other 
Negroes  by  their  intellect  and  their  energy,  distinguish 
themselves  equally  through  the  respective  characteristics 
of  their  idiom.  And  in  like  manner  that,  maugre  the 
variety  of  physical  forms,  a  common  color,  differently  shaded 
(nuance'e),  reunites  into  one  group  all  those  inhabitants  of 
Africa  whose  origin  is  not  Asiatic,  a  common  character 
links  together  the  grammars  of  their  languages;  —  or,  in 
other  words,  African  idioms  have  all  a  family-air,  without 
precisely  resembling  each  other. 

There  is  one  important  remark  to  be  made  here.  It  is,  that 
some  African  languages  denote  a  development  sufficiently 
advanced  of  the  faculty  of  speech,  and  consequently  of  the 
reflective  aptitudes  of  which  this  is  the  manifestation.  In 
this  fact  we  have  a  new  proof  that  tells  against  the  unity 
of  the  origin  of  languages.  Because,  if  African  languages 
were  the  issue  of  other  idioms,  fallen  in  some  way  among 
minds  more  narrow  (homes)  than  had  been  those  of  the 
supposed-elder  nations  that  spoke  them,  they  ought  neces- 
sarily to  have  become  impoverished,  to  have  altered  them- 
selves ;  and  the  laws,  which  have  been  established  above  in 
the  history  of  one  and  the  same  tongue,  would  lead  us  to 
expect  that  these  last  ought  to  be  at  once  more  analytical 
and  more  simple. 

Now,  their  very-pronounced  characteristic  of  agglutination 
excludes  the  idea  of  languages  arising  from  out  of  the 
decomposition  of  others ;  and  the  complex  nature  of  their 
grammar  attests  a  date  extremely  ancient  for  their  forma- 
tion. The  idioms  of  Africa  carry,  then,  the  stamp  both  of 
primitive  and  complicated  languages ;  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, of  tongues  which  are  not  derived,  at  an  epoch 
relatively  modern,  from  other  languages  possessing  the 
same  parallel  character.  Hence  it  must  be  concluded,  that 
these  African  languages  are  formations  as  ancient  as  other 
linguistic  formations ;  possessing  their  own  characteristics ; 
and  of  which  the  analogies  correspond  with  those  that  bind 
up  together  the  great  branches  of  the  Negro-race. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  69 

"We  have  seen  that  a  few  of  the  African  languages  recall  to  mind, 
either  through  their  vocabulary,  or  by  peculiarities  of  their  grammar, 
the  Polynesian  idioms. 

These  idioms  constitute,  as  it  were,  a  grand  Zone,  that  extends 
betwixt  Africa  and  America :  and  this  position  explains  how  migra- 
tions of  the  race  that  spoke  them,  and  which  we  shall  call  Malayo- 
Polynesian,  may  have  come  over  to  blend  themselves  with  the  negroes 
of  Africa.  From  Madagascar  as  far  as  Polynesia,  we  find  a  family 
of  similar  tongues  that  has  become  designated  by  the  name  of  Ma- 
layo-Polynesian,  after  that  of  the  race. 

It  decomposes  itself  into  two  groups,  viz  :  the  Malay  group,  com- 
prehending an  "ensemble"  of  idioms  spoken  from  Madagascar  to 
the  Philippine-islands ;  and  the  Polynesian  group,  properly  so-termed. 

One  meets  again,  in  this  family,  with  the  self-same  inequality  of 
development  amid  the  different  languages  that  compose  it.  Whilst 
the  Malay  denotes  an  advanced  degree  of  culture,  the  idioms  of  Po- 
lynesia offer  a  simplicity  altogether  primitive.  These  have  restricted 
their  phonetic  system  within  very  narrow  limits ;  and  they  employ 
matter-of-fact  methods,  no  less  than  very  poor  forms,  in  order  to 
mark  the  grammatical  categories.  It  is  through  the  help  of  particles, 
oftentimes  equivocal,  that  these  languages  try  to  give  clearness  to  a 
discourse  compounded,  albeit,  of  rigid  and  invariable  elements.  The 
structure  of  Polynesian  words  is  much  more  simple  than  that  of  the 
Malay  words :  a  syllable  cannot  be  terminated  by  a  consonant  fol- 
lowed by  a  vowel ;  or  it  is  not  even  formed  save  through  a  single 
vowel.  These  languages  are,  besides,  deprived  of  sibilants ;  and  they 
tend  towards  a  planing-away  of  homogeneous  consonants,  and  to 
cause  those  that  possess  a  too-pronounced  individuality  to  disappear. 
It  has  seemed,  therefore,  that  the  Polynesian  tongues  result  from  the 
gradual  alteration  of  Malay  languages ;  which  are  far  more  energetic 
and  much  more  defined.  Otherwise  this  Polynesian  family  offers  a 
tolerably  great  homogeneity :  everywhere  one  re-beholds  in  it  this 
identical  elementary  phonology.  The  idioms  of  the  Marquesas-isles, 
of  New-Zealand,  of  Taiti,  of  the  Society-islands,  of  the  Sandwich  and 
Tonga,  are  bound  together  by  close  ties  of  relationship.  Such  is  the 
paucity  of  their  vocal  system,  that  they  have  recourse  frequently  to 
the  repetition  of  the  same  syllable,  in  order  to  form  new  words. 
The  onomatopee  is  very  frequent  in  them.  The  grammatical  cate- 
gories are  also  but  vaguely  indicated ;  and  one  often  sees  the  same 
word  belonging  to  different  parts  of  the  same  sentence.  The  methods 
of  enunciating  one  idea  are  sometimes  the  same,  whether  for  ex- 
pressing an  action  or  for  designating  an  object.  The  gender  and 
number  are  often  not   even  indicated.     The  vocal  system  (which 


70  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

recalls,  in  certain  respects,  that  of  the  Dravidian  tongues)  seems, 
by  the  way,  to  have  undergone,  in  the  course  of  time,  modifications 
sufficiently  deep. 

The  Malgache,  or  Malagasy,  spoken  at  the  island  of  Madagascar, 
constitutes,  as  it  were,  a  link  between  the  Malayo-Polynesian  idioms 
and  those  of  Africa.  Mr.  J.  R.  Logan,  in  an  excellent  sei'ies  of  labors 
on  this  tongue,25  makes  it  seen  how  several  traits  in  common  existed 
between  the  Malgache  and  those  tongues  of  the  great  Souahilee- 
Congo  family,  which  he  terms  Zimhian.  The  same  system  of  sounds. 
One  finds  again  in  them  that  euphony  signalized  in  the  idioms  of 
Central  Africa,  associated  with  those  double  letters,  nip,  m  d,  nh,  nd, 
n j,  tr,  dr,  ndr,  nr,  ts,  nts,  tz,  that  also  characterize  the  languages 
of  Africa.  Prefixes  serve  equally  in  them  to  represent  the  categorical 
forms  of  a  word.  Finally,  that  which  is  still  more  characteristic,  the 
Malgache  does  not  distinguish  genders  any  more  than  do  the  African 
idioms ;  and,  like  the  vast  Souahilee-Congo  group,  it  carries  with  it 
the  generical  distinction,  according  as  beings  are  animate,  rational, 
or  inanimate,  irrational.  But,  side  by  side  with  these  striking  ana- 
logies, there  exist  fundamental  differences.  The  Malgache-vocabu- 
lary  is  African  in  no  manner  whatever,  although  it  may  have  imbibed 
some  words  of  idioms  from  the  coast  of  Africa :  it  might  approach 
rather  towards  the  Hamitic  vocabulary ;  but  its  pronouns  are  peculiar 
to  itself.  It  possesses  quite  an  especial  and  really  characteristic  power 
for  combining  formative  prefixes ;  and  many  traits  attach  it  to  those 
tongues  of  the  Soodan  which  have  surprised  philologers  by  their 
analogies  with  Polynesian  languages. 

It  is,  therefore,  evident  that  the  Malgache  represents  to  us  a  mix- 
ture of  idioms ;  or,  to  speak  more  exactly,  the  result  of  influences 
exerted  upon  a  Polynesian  idiom  by  African  languages,  and,  with 
some  plausibility  likewise,  by  those  of  the  Hamitic  class.  This  com- 
mingling betrays  itself  equally  in  the  population  of  Madagascar. 
Evidently  in  this  island,  to  judge  by  the  pervading  type  of  its  inha- 
bitants, there  has  been  an  infusion  of  black  blood  into  the  insular, 
or  reciprocally.  In  general,  the  races  that  find  themselves  spread 
over  the  zone  occupied  by  the  families  of  Malayo-Polynesian  lan- 
guages do  not  at  all  present  homogeneity ;  and  one  must  admit  that 
they  descend  from  innumerable  crossings.  Nevertheless,  the  fact — if 
fact  it  be,  after  the  analyses  of  Crawfukd,  indicated  farther  on — of  a 
(fond)  substratum  of  words  in  common,  and  of  a  grammar  reposing 
upon  the  same  bases,  proves  that  one  and  the  same  race  has  exer- 
cised its  influence  over  all  these  populations. 

25  The  Journal  of  ike  Indian  Archipelago  and  Eastern  Asia,  Singapore,  —  Supplementary 
No.  for  1854,  pp.  481  seqq. 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  71 

Where  must  one  go  and  seek  for  the  cradle  of  this  race  ?  Com- 
parative philology  places  us  upon  a  trail  towards  its  discovery. 
There  exists  in  the  trans-Gangetic  peninsula  an  "ensemble"  of  lan- 
guages appertaining  to  the  same  family  as  the  Chinese ;  by  attaching 
itself  on  the  one  hand  to  the  Thibetan,  and  on  the  other  to  the 
Siamese.  These  tongues  have  been  designated  by  the  name  "mono- 
syllabic," because  the  primitive  monosyllabism  is  perceived  in  them 
in  all  its  original  simplicity.  In  monosyllabic  languages,  there  yet 
exist  only  simple  words  rendered  through  one  single  emission  of  the 
voice.  These  words  are,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  both  substantives 
and  verbs :  they  express  the  notion,  the  idea,  independently  of  the 
word  ;  and  it  is  the  modus  through  which  this  word  becomes  placed 
in  relationship  with  other  words  that  indicates  its  categorical  sense  in 
a  sentence.  The  Chinese  tongue  —  above  all  under  its  ancient  or 
archaic  form  —  is  the  purest  type  of  this  monosyllabism.  It  corres- 
ponds in  this  manner  to  the  older  period  which  had  preceded  that 
of  agglutination. 

Every  Chinese  word — otherwise  said,  each  syllable — is  composed 
of  its  initial  and  of  its  final  sound.  The  initial  sound  is  one  of  the 
136  Chinese  consonants;  the  final  sound  is  a  vowel  that  never 
tolerates  other  than  a  nasal  consonant,  in  which  it  often  terminates, 
or  else  a  second  vowel.  "What  characterizes  the  Chinese,  as  well  as 
the  other  languages  of  the  same  family,  is  the  accent  that  manifests 
itself  by  a  sort  of  singing  intonation ;  which  varies  by  four  different 
ways  in  the  Chinese,  reduces  itself  to  two  in  the  Barman,  and  ends 
by  effacing  itself  in  the  Thibetan.  The  presence  of  this  accent 
destroys  all  harmony,  and  opposes  itself  to  the  "liaison"  of  words 
amongst  themselves ;  because,  the  minutest  change  in  the  tone  of  a 
word  would  give  birth  to  another  word.  In  order  that  speech  should 
remain  intelligible,  it  is  imperative  that  the  pronunciation  of  a  given 
word  must  be  invariable.  Hence  the  absence  of  what  philologists 
call  "phonology"  in  the  Chinese  family.  Albeit,  in  the  vernacular 
Siamese,  already  an  inclination  manifests  itself  to  lay  stress  upon, 
or  rather  to  drawl  out,  the  last  word  in  a  compound  expression. 
These  compounded  expressions  abound  in  Chinese ;  the  words  that 
enter  into  them  give  birth,  in  reality,  through  their  assemblage,  to  a 
new  word ;  because  the  sense  of  this  expression  has  often  no  resem- 
blance whatsoever,  almost  no  relationship,  to  that  of  the  two  or 
three  words  out  of  which  it  is  formed. 

The  drawling  upon  the  second  syllable  that  takes  place  in  the 
Siamese  is  the  point  of  departure  from  monosyllabism,  which  already 
shows  itself  still  more  in  the  Qambodjian.  The  Barman  corresponds 
to  the  passage  of  monosyllabic  tongues,  wherein  the  sounds  are  not 


72  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

oonnected,  into  languages  in  which  the  sounds  are  hound  together. 
Indeed,  nearly  all  the  Barman  words  are  monosyllabic;  but  they 
have  the  faculty  of  modifying  themselves  in  their  pronunciation  so 
as  to  hitch  themselves  on  to  the  other  words,  and  hence  originate  a 
more  harmonious  vocalization. 

All  the  basin  of  the  Irawaddy,  and  Aracan  (that  is  separated  from 
the  Burmese  empire  by  a  chain  of  mountains  running  nearly  parallel 
to  the  sea,  the  mounts  Teoma),  are  inhabited  by  tribes  speaking 
idioms  of  the  same  family  as  the  Barman.  Little  by  little,  other 
languages  of  the  same  family,  such  as  the  Laos,  have  been  driven 
back  from  the  north-west  of  the  trans-Gangetic  peninsula  by  con- 
quering populations  emanating  from  this  Burmese  race,  which  now- 
adays opposes  such  an  energetic  resistance  to  the  English.  It  is 
precisely  to  the  same  race  that  belong  the  more  savage  populations 
of  Assam.  Here,  speech  and  their  physical  type  leave  no  room  for 
doubt  in  this  respect.  Of  this  number  are  the  Singpho  and  the 
Manipouri. 

But,  that  the  Thibetan  is  itself  nothing  but  a  modification,  but  an 
alteration,  of  the  languages  of  this  same  monosyllabic  family,  is  what 
becomes  apparent  to  us  through  the  tongues  of  several  tribes  of 
Assam  and  of  Aracan,  —  such  as  that  of  the  Nagas,  and  that  of  the 
Youmas,  which  serve  for  the  transit  from  the  Barman  into  the  Thi- 
betan. These  more  or  less  barbarian  populations,  spread  out  at  the 
north-west  of  the  trans-Gangetic  peninsula,  have  all  the  character 
of  the  race  that  has  been  called  the  yellow.  Evidently  it  is  there 
that  one  must  seek  for  the  savage  type  of  the  Chinese  family. 

The  Thibetan  is  certainly  that  tongue  which  most  detaches  itself 
from  the  monosyllabic  family ;  and,  by  many  of  its  traits,  it  ap- 
proaches the  Dravidian  idioms.  It  demarcates  itself  from  the  Bar- 
man through  its  combinations  of  particular  consonants,  of  which  the 
vocal  effect  is  sweeter  and  more  mollified ;  but  the  numerous  aspi- 
rates and  nasals  of  the  Chinese  and  the  Barman  are  re-beheld  in  it. 
Upon  comparing  the  monuments  of  the  ancient  Barman  tongue, 
with  those  of  the  ancient  Thibetan,  one  perceives  that  formerly  this 
language  had  more  of  asperity, — asperity  of  which  the  Thibetan  still 
preserves  traces ;  because,  notwithstanding  its  combinations  of 
softened  consonants,  this  language  is  at  the  bottom  completely 
devoid  of  harmony.  Particles  placed  after  the  word  modify  its  sense, 
and  the  order  of  these  words  is  always  the  inverse  of  what  it  is  in 
our  idioms.  Hence  the  apparition,  in  these  tongues,  of  the  first 
lineaments  of  that  process  of  agglutination  already  so  conspicuous  in 
the  Barman.  One  may  construct  in  it  some  entire  sentences  com- 
posed of  disjointed  words,  linked  between  each  other  only  by  the 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES  73 

retro-active  virtue,  or  faculty,  of  a  final  word;  and  it  is  thus  that 
these  languages  arrive  at  rendering  the  ideas  of  time  still  more  com- 
plex. The  Barman,  in  particular,  is,  in  this  respect,  of  very  great 
richness,  —  a  series  of  proper  names  can  be  treated  in  it  as  an  unity, 
and  may  take  on  at  the  end  the  mark  udo"  of  the  plural,  which 
reacts  then  upon  the  whole  :  and  even  a  succession  of  substantives  is 
susceptible  of  taking  the  indefinite  plural  umya." 

These  languages  cause  us,  therefore,  to  assist,  so  to  say,  at  the 
birth  of  agglutinative  idioms,  of  which  the  Basque  has  afforded  us, 
in  Europe,  such  a  curious  specimen.  Albeit,  whatever  be  the  de- 
velopment that  several  idioms  of  the  trans-Gangetic  peninsula  may 
bave  acquired  through  the  effects  of  their  successive  evolution,  they 
are  all  not  the  less  of  extreme  simplicity.  The  Barman  is  the  most 
elaborated  of  the  whole  family;  whereas  the  Chinese,  and  the  speech 
of  the  empire  of  Annam,  are  but  very  little.  As  concerns  the  vocal 
system,  on  the  contrary,  the  Thibetan  and  the  Barman  do  not  raise 
themselves  much  above  the  Chinese ;  and  it  is  in  the  south  of  the 
trans-Grangetic  peninsula  that  one  must  inquire  for  more  developed 
articulations,  always  exercising  themselves,  however,  upon  a  small 
number  of  monosyllabic  sounds.  On  the  opposite  hand,  the  tongues 
of  the  south-east  of  that  peninsula  approximate  more  to  the  Chi- 
nese as  regards  syntax. 

One  sees,  then,  that,  maugre  their  unity,  the  monosyllabic  lan- 
guages form  groups  so  distinct  that  one  cannot  consider  them  as 
proceeding  the  ones  from  the  others,  but  which  are  respectively  con- 
nected through  divers  analogies ;  and  that  they  must,  in  consequence, 
be  placed  simply  parallel  with  each  other,  at  distances  ever  unequal 
from  the  original  monosyllabism.  Although  the  Barman  and  the 
Thibetan  approach  each  other  very  much,  —  and  that  they  find,  in 
certain  idioms,  as  it  were,  a  frontier  in  common, — they  still  remain 
too  far  asunder  with  regard  to  the  grammar,  the  vocabulary  and  the 
pronunciation,  for  it  to  be  admitted  that  one  may  be  derived  from 
the  other.  They  seem  rather  to  be,  according  to  the  observation  of 
Mr.  Logan,  two  debris  differently  altered  of  a  more  ancient  tongue 
that  had  the  same  basis  as  the  Chinese. 

Thus  one  must  believe  that,  from  a  most  remote  epoch,  the  yellow 
race  occupies  all  the  south-east  of  Asia ;  because  the  employment  of 
these  monosyllabic  languages  is  a  characteristical  trait  which  never 
deceives.  In  those  defiles  of  Assam  where  so  many  different  tribes 
— repelled  thither  by  the  conquests  of  the  Aryas,  of  the  Chinese  and 
the  Burmese — find  themselves  gathered,  the  races  of  Tartar-type  all 
distinguish  themselves   from  the  Dravidian  tongues   through  then 


74  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

monosyllabic  structure,  allied  sometimes  to  the  Thibetan,  at  others 
to  the  Barman. 

In  the  peninsula  of  Malacca,  or  Malaya,  and  amid  the  isles  of 
Malaysia,  one  meets  with  some  populations  which,  as  regards  the 
type,  recall  to  mind  the  most  barbarous  tribes  of  Assam,  —  the  Gar- 
rows,  for  example.  There  have  been  found  again  at  Sumatra  some 
tribes  whose  customs  and  whose  type  very  much  recall  those  of  the 
savage  populations  at  the  north-east  of  Hindostan.  The  Nagas,  or 
Kakhyens,  of  whose  tongue  we  have  already  spoken,  possess  a  very 
remarkable  similitude  of  traits  and  usages  with  the  Polynesians  and 
divers  indigenous  septs  of  Sumatra.  They  tattoo  themselves  like  the 
islanders  of  the  South  Sea.  Every  time  they  have  slain  a  foe,  they 
make  (as  has  been  observed  amongs  the  Pagai  of  Sumatra)  a  new 
mark  on  their  skins ;  and,  as  takes  places  among  the  Aboungs — 
another  people  of  the  same  island — and  also  among  certain  savages 
of  Borneo,  a  young  man  must  not  wed  so  long  as  he  has  not  cut  off 
a  certain  number  of  the  heads  of  enemies.  Among  the  Michmis  — 
another  tribe  of  Assam — one  finds  again  the  usage,  so  universal  in 
Polynesia,  and  equally  diffused  amid  the  Sumatran  Pagais,  of  ex- 
posing the  dead  upon  scaffolds  until  the  flesh  becomes  corrupted  and 
disengages  itself  from  the  bones.  All  these  tribes  of  Assam,  which 
remind  us  as  well  of  the  indigenous  septs  of  the  Sunda-islands  as 
of  the  primitive  population  of  the  peninsula  of  Malacca,  speak  mono- 
syllabic tongues  appertaining  to  the  Tbibeto-Barman,  or  Siamo- 
Barman,  family.  This  double  circumstance  induced  the  belief  that 
it  is  the  trans-G-angetic  peninsula  whence  issued  the  Malayo- 
Polynesian  populations.  The  languages  they  speak  cluster  around 
the  Siamese  and  the  Barman ;  but,  in  the  ratio  that  they  are  removed 
from  their  cradle,  their  sounds  become  softened  down,  and  they 
become  impoverished,  whilst  evermore  tending,  however,  to  get  rid 
of  the  monosyllabism  that  gave  them  birth. 

These  transformations,  undergone  by  the  Malayo-Polynesian  lan- 
guages, have  been,  nevertheless,  sufficiently  profound  to  efface  those 
traits  in  common  due  to  their  relationship.  They  arise,  according 
to  probability,  from  the  numerous  interminglings  that  have  been 
operated  in  Oceanica. 

"Whilst  some  petty  peoples  of  the  Thibeto-Chinese  source  were 
descending,  through  the  trans-Gangetic  peninsula,  into  Malaysia, 
and  advanced  incessantly  towards  the  East,  those  Dravidian  tribes 
that  occupied  India,  and  which  themselves  issued  from  a  stock,  if 
not  identical,  at  least  very  neighborly  with  the  preceding,  were 
coming  to  cross  themselves  with  these  Malaysian  populations.  But 
such  cross-breeding  was  not  the  only  one.     There  was  another  that 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  75 

altered  the  race  still  more.  This  commingling  took  effect  with  a 
third  population  that  appears  to  have  been  the  veritable  primitive 
race  of  the  south  of  Hindostan- — a  black  race  which  has  been  thrown 
to  the  east,  but  whose  remains  are  still  found  about  the  middle  of 
the  Indian  Sea,  at  the  Andaman  islets,  and  that  constitutes  the 
foundation  of  the  pristine  population  of  Borneo  and  the  Philippines. 
It  seems  to  be  the  same  population  that  occupied  exclusively,  prior 
to  the  advent  of  Europeans  in  those  waters,  New  Guinea,  Australia, 
Van  Diemen's  Land  (Tasmania),  and  divers  archipelagoes  placed  to 
the  eastward  of  New  South  Wales. 

The  tongues  of  these  black  Oceanic  tribes  were,  without  doubt, 
very  barbarous,  and  they  have  been,  in  several  cases,  promptly  sup- 
planted by  the  Malayan  idioms.  They  have,  notwithstanding,  still 
left  traces  of  their  existence  at  the  Sandwich  isles,  which  seem  to 
have  been  occupied  at  the  beginning,  and  before  the  arrival  of  the 
Polynesians  proper,  by  the  black  race.  The  ground-work  of  their 
vocabulary  has  remained  Australian,  although  the  grammar  is  wholly 
Polynesian.  It  is  the  same  at  the  Viti  islands.  Elsewhere,  how- 
ever, as  at  the  Philippines,  those  blacks  who  are  known  under  the 
name  of  Aiytas,  (Ajetas),  or  Igolotes,  have  adopted  the  idiom  of  the 
Malayan  family,  which  has  penetrated  into  their  island  with  the 
conquerors. 

Unhappily,  we  possess  but  very  little  information  concerning  the 
Australian  languages.  All  that  may  be  affirmed  is,  that  they  were 
quite  distinct  from  the  two  groups  of  the  Malayo-Polynesian  family : 
the  Malay  group  and  the  Polynesian  group  being  themselves  very 
sharply  separated. 

Mr.  Logan  has  caught  certain  analogies  between  the  Dravidian 
idioms  and  the  Australian  tongues:  which  is  easily  understood; 
because  the  populations  that  expelled  from  Hindostan  those  puny 
tribes  which,  at  the  beginning,  had  lived  dispersed  therein,  must  have 
exerted  by  their  language  some  influence  over  the  idiom  of  these 
septs,  which  was  evidently  very  uncouth.  A  profound  study  of  the 
names  of  number,  in  all  the  idioms  of  the  Dravidian  family,  has 
revealed  to  him  the  existence  of  a  primary  numerical  system  purely 
binary, — which  is  met  with  again  in  the  Australian  languages ;  aud 
it  corresponds  to  that  little-advanced  stage  in  which  one  would  sup- 
pose the  black  race  that  had  peopled  India  must  have  been.  And 
this  binary  system,  which  the  later  progress  of  intelligence  in  the 
Dravidian  race  has  caused  to  be  replaced  by  more  developed  systems 
— the  quinary  system,  and  the  decimal — has  left  some  traces  both  in 
tongues  of  the  southern  trans-Gangetic  peninsula,  and  amidst  certain 


76  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

populations  of  the  peninsula  of  Malaya.26    Now,  we  again  encounter, 
even  yet,  this  binary  system  among  Australian  populations. 

The  Dravidian  idioms  have,  then,  chased  before  them  the  Austra- 
lian tongues  at  a  primordial  epoch  that  now  loses  itself  in  the  night 
of  time.  At  a  later  age,  there  appeared  the  Malayo-Polynesian  lan- 
guages, which  have  coalesced  in  order  to  push  still  farther  on  to  the 
eastward,  or  at  least  to  drive  within  a  more  circumscribed  space, 
these  same  Australian  tongues.  Then,  after  having  implanted  them- 
selves in  those  islands  whence  the  Australian  savages  had  been  gra- 
dually expulsed,  the  two  groups,  the  Malay  and  the  Polynesian, 
declared  war  against  each  other ;  and  now-  a-days,  in  the  Indian 
Ocean,  the  Polynesian  becomes  more  and  more  crowded  out  by  the 
Malay. 

This  fact  brings  us  back  naturally  to  the  problem  of  the  origin  of 
that  linguistic  formation  which  we  have  designated  by  the  name 
"  Malayo-Polynesian." 

"We  have  said  that  the  Thibeto-Barman  races  had  expelled  from 
India  those  black  tribes  with  which  they  must  have  intermingled  in 
certain  cantons.  The  Dravidian  populations  acted  in  the  same  way. 
Several  of  the  primitive  tribes  of  Hindostan  preserve  still,  in  their 
features  and  in  their  skin,  the  impress  of  an  infusion  of  Australian 
blood.  Has  a  mixture  of  another  nature  taken  place  in  Polyne- 
sia ?  Are  the  islanders  of  the  Great  Ocean  born  from  the  crossing 
of  some  race  coming  from  elsewhere  ?  Several  ethnologists,  and 
notably  M.  Gustave  d'Eichthal,27  have  admitted  that  the  Polynesians 
came  from  the  east.  Besides  the  resemblances  of  usage  which  these 
ethnographers  have  perceived  between  divers  American  populations 
(and  especially  those  of  the  Gfuarani  family)  and  the  Polynesians, 
they  have  discovered,  in  their  respective  idioms,  a  considerable 
number  of  words  in  common.  Nevertheless,  such  similitudes  are 
neither  sufficiently  general,  nor  sufficiently  striking,  to  enable  us 
with  certainty  to  identify  the  two  races.  There  are  concordances 
that,  as  regards  words,  may  originate  simply  from  migrations ;  or 
which,  as  regards  forms  of  syntax,  result  from  parity  of  grammatical 
development. 

This  does  not  prevent  the  employment  of  other  facts  (as  yet  histori- 
cally unproven,  and  fraught  with  tremendous  physical  obstacles)  to 
demonstrate  the  possibility  of  the  emigration  of  some  American  popu- 
lations ;  but  upon  this  point  languages  do  not  yield  us  anything 
decisive.     More  conclusive  are  the  comparisons  that  M.  d'Eichthal 

26  Journal  of  the  Indian  Archipelago  and  Eastern  Asia,  April — June,  1855,  p.  180. 
21  Etudes sur  VEistoire  Primitive  des  Races  Oeianiennes  et  Americaines,  by  the  learned  "Se- 
cretaire-adjoint de  la  Society  Ethnologique." 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  77 

has  made  between  the  tongues  of  those  FoulaJis,  or  Eellatahs,  that 
inhabit  Senegarnbia,  and  some  idioms  of  the  Malayo-Polynesian 
family.  These  analogies  are  too  striking  for  us  to  refuse  some  recog- 
nition of  an  identity  of  origines ;  which,  furthermore,  resiles  from 
many  other  comparisons.  The  light  complexion  of  the  Eoulahs,  and 
the  superiority  of  their  intellect,  had  at  an  early  hour  attracted  the 
notice  of  voyagers.  "We  would  admit,  therefore,  that  the  Malayo- 
Polynesian  race, — whilst  it  advanced  towards  the  south-east  of  Asia, 
and  exterminated  or  vanquished  the  black  races — had  penetrated  on 
the  opposite  hand  into  Africa ;  crossed  itself  with  the  negro  popula- 
tions ;  and  thus  gave  birth  to  the  Foulah-tribes  and  their  congener 
peoples.  At  Madagascar,  we  re-encounter  this  same  Malayo-Polyne- 
sian race  under  the  name  of  Ovas,  or  Hovas.  This  island  appears  like 
the  point  of  re-partition  of  the  race  that  might  be  named  "  par  excel- 
lence" Oceanic,  because  it  is  by  sea  that  it  has  invariably  advanced. 

[JTot  to  interrupt  the  order  of  the  foregoing  sketch  of  these  Oceanic 
languages,  we  have  hitherto  refrained  from  presenting  another  con- 
temporaneous view,  that  would,  in  many  respects,  modify  the  one 
which,  on  the  European  continent,  represents  an  opinion  now  cur- 
rent among  philologists  concerning  those  families  of  tongues  to 
which  the  name  "  Malayo-Polynesian"  has  been  applied.  If  the  high 
authority  of  Mr.  John  Crawfurd28  were  to  be  passed  over  in  Malayan 
subjects,  our  argument  would  lack  completeness ;  at  the  same  time 
that  the  results  of  the  learned  author  of  the  "  History  of  the  Indian 
Archipelago,"  were  they  rigorously  established,  would  merely  ope- 
rate upon  those  we  have  set  forth,  so  far  as  breaking  up  into  several 
distinct  groups,  —  such  as,  Malgaohe,  Malay,  Papuan,  Harfoorian, 
Polynesian,  Australian,  Tasvianian,  &c,  —  the  families  of  languages, 
in  this  treatise,  denominated  by  ourselves  Malayo-Polynesian.  And 
it  must  be  conceded  concerning  those  tongues  spoken  by  the  perhaps- 
indigenous  black  races  of  Malaysia,  Micronesia,  and  Melanesia,  that, 
while,  on  the  one  hand,  science  possesses  at  present  but  scanty  infor- 
mation; on  the  other,  no  man  has  devoted  more  patience  and  skill 
to  the  analysis  of  such  materials  as  we  have,  than  Mr.  Crawfurd. 
The  following  is  a  brief  coup  d'ceil  over  his  researches. 

"  A  certain  connexion,  of  more  or  less  extent,  is  well  ascertained 
to  exist  between  most  of  the  languages  which  prevail  from  Mada- 
gascar to  Easter  Island  in  the  Pacific,  and  from  Formosa,  on  the 
coast  of  China,  to  'New  Zealand.  It  exists,  then,  over  two  hundred 
degrees  of  longitude,  and  seventy  of  latitude,  or  over  a  fifth  part  of 

the  surface  of  the  earth.  ******  The  vast  region  of  which  I 

— — — 

28  A  Grammar  and  Dictionary  of  the  Malay  Language,  London,  in  8vo.,  1852;  vol.  i., 
Dissertation  and  Grammar. 


78  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

have  given  the  outline  may  be  geographically  described  as  consist- 
ing of  the  innumerable  islands  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  from 
Sumatra  to  New  Guinea — of  the  great  group  of  the  Philippines — of 
the  islands  of  the  North  and  South  Pacific  —  and  of  Madagascar. 
It  is  inhabited  by  many  different  and  distinct  races  of  men,  —  as  the 
Malayan,  the  brown  Polynesian,  the  insular  Negro  of  several  varie- 
ties, and  the  African  of  Madagascar." 

Beginning  with  these  last,  Mr.  Crawfurd  says,  — "  Very  clear 
traces  of  a  Malayan  tongue  are  found  some  3000  miles  distant  from 
the  nearest  part  of  the  Malayan  Archipelago,  and  only  240  miles 
from  the  eastern  shore  of  Africa.  Prom  this  isolated  fact  (which 
the  author,  pp.  eclxxvi  —  xxxi,  shows  by  historical  navigation  to  be 
by  no  means  improbable),  the  importance  and  the  value  of  which  I 
am  about  to  test,  some  writers  have  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  language  of  Madagascar  is  of  the  same  stock  with  Malay  and 
Javanese,  and  hence,  again,  that  the  people  who  speak  it  are  of  the 
same  race  with  the  Malays.  It  can  be  shown,  without  much  diffi- 
culty, that  there  is  no  shadow  of  foundation  for  so  extravagant  an 
hypothesis."  And,  in  fact,  after  exhibiting  how  in  their  grammars, 
both  groups  of  tongues  resemble  each  other  merely  by  their  simpli- 
city, he  manifests,  through  a  comparative  vocabulary,  that  the  whole 
number  of  known  Malayan  words,  in  the  Malagasi  language,  is  but 
168  in  8340 ;  or  about  20  in  1000. 

Next,  the  insular  Negroes  of  the  Pacific  Archipelagoes  —  the 
"  Puwa-puwa,  or  Papuwa,  which,  however,  is  only  the  adjective 
'frizzly,'  or  'curling.'  "  After  enumerating  their  physical  characte- 
ristics at  different  islands,  he  concludes — "Here,  then,  without 
reckoning  other  Negro  races  of  the  Pacific  which  are  known  to 
exist,29  we  have,  reckoning  from  the  Andamans,  twelve  varieties, 
generally  so  differing  from  each  other  in  complexion,  in  features, 
and  in  strength  and  stature,  that  some  are  puny  pigmies  under  five 
feet  high,  and  others  large  and  powerful  men  of  near  six  feet.  To 
place  all  these  in  one  category  would  be  preposterous,  and  contrary 
to  truth  and  reason."  That  they  have  no  common  language  is  made 
evident  (p.  clxxi)  through  a  comparative  vocabulary  of  seven  of 
these  Oriental  Negro  tongues ;  whence  the  unavoidable  conclusion 
that  each  is  a  distinct  language. 

Adverting  digressionally  to  the  Australians,  —  who  are  never  to 
be  confounded,  physically-speaking,  with  any  of  the  woolly-haired 

29  In  a  later  monograph  on  the  "Negroes  of  the  Indian  Archipelago"  (Edinburgh  New 
Philosophical  Journal,  1853,  p.  78),  Crawturd  maintains,  —  "There  are  15  varieties  of 
Oriental  Negroes.  ******  There  is  no  evidence,  therefore,  to  justify  the  conclusion, 
that  the  Oriental  Negro,  wherever  found,  is  one  and  the  same  race." 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES.  79 

blacks  of  the  Pacific  Archipelagoes.  The  point  of  contact  between 
these  distinct  types  is  at  Cape  York,  in  Torres  Straits,  and  around 
its  neighboring  islets.  No  where  else  has  amalgamation  betwixt 
them  been  perceived.  "As  to  the  great  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Australia,  they  are  assuredly  neither  Malays,  Negroes,  nor  Poly- 
nesians, nor  a  mixture  of  any  of  these,  but  a  very  peculiar  people, 
distinct  from  all  the  other  races  of  men"  (p.  clxxvi).  In  lists  of 
about  thirty  languages,  already  known  in  the  yet-discovered  parts 
of  Australia,  Mr.  Crawfurd  (p.  ccxci)  has  been  unable  to  detect 
more  than  four  or  five  words  of  corrupt  Malay ;  and  that  only  in 
the  tongue  of  a  tribe  at  Cobourg  peninsula,  once  Port  Essington. 

As  to  Polynesia,  our  author  holds : — "  The  languages  spoken  over 
this  vast  area  are,  probably,  nearly  as  numerous  as  the  islands  of 
themselves ;  but  still  there  is  one  of  very  wide  dissemination,  which 
has  no  native  name,  but  which,  with  some  propriety,  has  been  called 
by  Europeans,  on  account  of  its  predominance,  the  Polynesian. 
This  language,  with  variations  of  dialect,  is  spoken  by  the  same 
race  of  men  from  the  Eiji  group  west,  to  Easter  island  eastward, 
and  from  the  Sandwich  islands  north,  to  the  New  Zealand  islands 
south.  The  language  and  the  race  have  been  imagined  to  be  essen- 
tially the  same  as  the  Malay,  which  is  undoubtedly  a  great  mistake" 
(p.  cxxxiv).  After  pointing  out  their  physical  contrasts  with  cha- 
racteristic precision,  he  adds  —  "  The  attempt,  therefore,  to  bring 
these  two  distinct  races  under  the  same  category  had  better  be 
dropped,  for,  as  will  be  presently  seen,  even  the  evidence  of  lan- 
guage gives  no  countenance."  Again  bringing  to  his  aid  compara- 
tive vocabularies,  Mr.  Crawfurd  (p.  ccxl)  ascertains  that  the  total 
number  of  Malayan  words,  in  the  whole  range  of  Polynesian 
tongues,  is  about  80 ;  including  even  the  numerals ;  which  them- 
selves make  up  nearly  a  sixth  part  of  that  trifling  quantity, — on 
which  imagination  erects  an  hypothesis  of  unity,  between  the  lusty 
and  handsome  islanders  of  the  South  Seas,  and  the  squat  and  ill- 
favored  navigators  of  Malayan  waters. 

Lastly,  the  Malays  themselves.  Sumatra  is,  traditionally,  their 
father-land;  but  they  were  wholly  unknown  to  Europeans  before 
Marco-Polo  in  1295 ;  and,  220  more  years  elapsed  before  acquaint- 
ance with  them  was  real.  From  this  centre  they  seem  to  have 
radiatedover  the  adjacent  coasts  and  islands;  subduing,  extermina- 
ting, enslaving,  or  driving  into  the  interior,  the  many  sub-typical 
races  of  the  same  stock  which  appear  to  have  been,  like  themselves, 
terrse  geniti  of  the  Archipelago,  distinguished  by  their  restless  and 
ever-encroaching  name.     "By  any  standard  of  beauty  which  can  be 


80  ON    THE     DISTRIBUTION    AND 

taken,  from  the  Ganges  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  the  Malays  must 
he  pronounced  as  a  homely  race," — whose  heau-ideal  of  cuticular 
charms  (as  Crawfurd  says  in  his  larger  History)  is  summed  up  in  the 
phrase  "  skin  of  virgin-gold  color."  In  their  physique,  the  Malays 
are  neither  Chinese  nor  Dravidians,  neither  Polynesians  nor  Mala- 
gasi,  neither  Oriental  nor  Occidental  Negroes;  hut  as  Dryden  the 
poet  sung  (p.  xvi) :  — 

"Flat  faces,  such  as  would  disgrace  a  screen, 
Such  as  in  Bantam's  embassy  were  seen :  — " 

in  short,  nothing  else  than  Malays.  For  the  specification  of  their 
language  and  its  dialects,  the  "  Grammar  and  Dictionary"  is  the 
source  to  which  we  must  refer;  but,  what  singularly  commends 
Mr.  Crawftjrd's  analytical  investigations  to  the  ethnographer  is,  the 
careful  method  through  which,  by  well-chosen  and  varied  compara- 
tive vocabularies,  he  has  succeeded  in  showing,  how  Malayan  blood, 
language,  and  influence,  decrease  in  the  exact  ratio  that,  from  their 
continental  peninsula  of  Malacca,  as  a  starting  point,  their  coloni- 
zing propensities  have  since  widened  the  diameter  between  their 
own  primitive  cradle,  and  their  present  commercial  factories,  or 
piratical  nuclei.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that,  upon  many  of  the 
islands  themselves,  both  large  and  small,  there  exist  distinct  types 
of  men,  independently  of  Malayan  or  other  colonists  on  the  sea- 
board, speaking  distinct  languages.  Thus,  in  Sumatra,  there  are  4 
written,  and  4  unwritten  tongues,  besides  other  barbarous  idioms 
spoken  in  its  vicinity :  at  Borneo,  so  far  as  is  yet  known  of  its  un- 
explored interior,  there  are  at  least  9 ;  at  Celebes,  several.  At  the 
same  time  that,  according  to  Mr.  Logan,  each  newly-discovered 
savage  tribe,  like  the  Orang  Mintird,  the  Orang  Benud,  the  Orang 
Muka  Kuning,  &c,  amid  the  jungle-hidden  creeks  around  Singa- 
pore, presents  a  new  vocabulary. 

Being  one  of  the  few  Englishmen,  morally  brave  enough  to  avow, 
as  well  as  sufficiently  learned  to  sustain,  by  severely-scientific  argu- 
ment (pp.  ii-vii,  and  elsewhere),  polygenistic  doctrines  on  the  origin 
of  mankind,  Mr.  Crawfurd's  ethnological  opinions  are  entitled  to 
the  more  respect  from  his  fellow-philologues,  inasmuch  as — without 
dispute  about  a  vague  appellative,  "  Malayo-Polynesian," — his  philo- 
sophic deductions  must  logically  tally  with  those  continental  views, 
to  which  a  Franco-Germanic  utterance  is  given  at  the  close  of 
our  section  Hid. 

Upon  the  various  systems  of  linguistic  classification,  through 
which  each  unprejudiced  philologist  —  i.  e.,  to  the  exclusion  always 


CLASSIFICATION    OF     TONGUES.  81 

of  preconceived  dogmas  fabricated,  as  Koranic  Arabs  would  say,  fi  aya- 
mena  ed-djah'Uieli,  "daring  our  days  of  ignorance" — defines  his  more 
or  less  scientific,  but  ever-individual,  impressions,  differences  of 
opinion  must  inevitably  ensue ;  some  scholars  reasoning  from  one 
stand-point,  others  from  another :  nor  would  we,  when  closing  this 
parenthesis  about  the  term  "Malayo- Polynesian,"  overlook  the 
physiological  fact  indicated  by  Prof.  Agassiz,30  viz :  that  identities 
among  types  of  men  linguistically  similar,  whilst  historically  and 
ethnically  different,  do  sometimes  arise  only  from  similarity  in  the 
internal  "  structure  of  the  throat" — anatomical  niceties  imperceptible 
to  the  eye  perhaps,  but  not  the  less  distinctly  impressive  on  an  acute 
and  experienced  ear.] 

Of  all  the  families  of  languages  at  present  recognized  on  the  sur- 
face of  our  globe,  there  only  remains  for  us  to  examine  the  American 
tongues.  Endeavor  has  been  made  to  attach  them  to  the  Polynesian 
family ;  but  from  these  they  essentially  distinguish  themselves,  and 
we  shall  see  presently  that  certain  traits  assimilate  them,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  African  languages. 

Let  us  signalize  a  primary  fact.  It  is  that,  whilst  the  populations 
of  the  two  Americas  are  far  from  offering  a  great  homogeneity 
of  physical  characters,  their  languages,  on  the  contrary,  consti- 
tute a  group  which,  as  relates  to  grammar,  affords  an  unity  very 
remarkable. 

That  which  distinguishes  all  these  tongues  is  a  tendency,  more 
apparent  than  that  among  any  other  linguistic  family,  to  agglutination. 
The  words  are  agglomerated  through  contraction, — by  suppressing 
one  or  several  syllables  of  the  combined  radicals  —  and  the  words 
thus  formed  become  treated  as  if  they  were  simple  words,  susceptible 
of  being  again  employed  and  modified  like  these.  This  property  has 
induced  the  giving  to  the  languages  of  the  ISTew  "World  the  name  of 
poly  synthetical,  —  which  M.  F.  Liebeb,  has  proposed  to  alter  into  that 
of  olophrastic. 

Besides  this  characteristic,  there  are  several  others  that,  without 
being  so  absolute,  seem  nevertheless  to  be  very  significant.  Thus, 
these  idioms  do  not  in  general  know  our  distinction  of  gender ;  in 
lieu  of  recognizing  a  masculine  and  a  feminine,  they  have  an  animate 
and  an  inanimate  gender.  I  have  said  above,  that  there  is  one  trait 
which  is  common  to  them  and  to  divers  idioms  of  Polynesia,  as  well 
as  to  the  Hottentot  tongues.  It  is  the  existence  of  two  plurals  (and 
sometimes  of  two  duals),  exclusive  and  inclusive,  otherwise  tei'med, 

80  Christian  Examiner,  Boston,  July,  1850,  p.  31 :  —  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  282. 

6 


82  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

particular  and  general.  The  exclusive  plural,  in  certain  dialects, 
applies  itself  to  the  orator,  and  to  the  community  to  which  he 
belongs,  by  excluding  the  others ;  whereas,  in  sundry  dialects,  this 
same  plural  applies  to  those  in  whose  name  one  speaks,  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  persons  to  whom  one  is  addressing  a  discourse. 

One  trait  of  the  grammar  of  American  languages,  that  has  greatly 
struck  the  first  Europeans  who  sought  to  grasp  their  rules,  is  what 
they  have  called  transition.  This  process,  otherwise  intimately  con- 
nected with  polysynthetism,  consists  in  dissolving  the  pronoun  indi- 
cative of  the  subject,  —  no  less  than  that  one  indicating  the  object, — 
into  the  verb,  so  as  to  compose  but  a  single  word.  Hence  it  follows 
that  no  verb  can  be  employed  without  its  governing  case  (regime). 
The  number  of  these  transitions  varies  according  to  the  languages, 
and  the  pronoun  incorporates  itself  with  the  verb  generally  by  suffixes. 
By  means  of  a  modification  of  the  principal  radical,  American 
tongues  arrive  at  rendering  all  the  accessory  or  derived  notions  that 
attach  themselves  to  the  idea  of  verb.  Hence  arises  a  vast  number 
of  voies.  These  changes  constitute  all  the  riches  of  the  New  World's 
idioms.  This  abundance  of  changes  is  above  all  striking  in  the  Al- 
gonquin, and  in  Dahkota, — the  language  of  an  important  Sioux  tribe. 
On  the  contrary,  in  the  Moxo, — a  tongue  of  South  America,  the  conju- 
gations reduce  themselves  to  one.  Here  we  have  a  new  trait  of 
resemblance  between  the  idioms  of  Africa  and  those  of  the  ISTew 
World. 

A  classification  of  American  languages  has  been  attempted.  It  is 
a  difficult  undertaking ;  because,  in  general,  amid  populations  that 
live  by  tribes  exceedingly  fracted,  and  in  a  savage  state,  words 
become  extremely  altered  in  passing  from  one  tribe  to  another.  New 
words  are  created  with  great  facility ;  and  were  one  to  take  but  the 
differences  into  account,  it  might  be  believed  that  these  languages 
are  fundamentally  distinct.  The  erudite  Swiss,  long  a  distinguished 
citizen  of  the  United  States  —  successor,  in  philology,  to  a  learned 
Franco- American,  Duponceau  —  Mr.  Gallatin,  has  found  in  North 
America  alone  some  37  families  of  tongues,  comprising  more  than 
100  dialects ;  and  even  then  he  was  far  from  having  exhausted  all 
the  idioms  of  that  portion  of  the  world.  It  is  true  that  he  embraces, 
within  his  classification,  the  Eskimaux  and  Athapascan  idioms,  which 
appertain,  as  well  as  certainly  the  former  race,  to  the  Ougro-Finnie 
stock, — otherwise  termed  the  boreal  branch.  Among  North  Ameri- 
can families,  those  of  the  Algonquin,  Iroquois,  Cherokee,  Choctaw  and 
Sioux,  are  the  most  important;  but,  concerning  the  indigenous 
tongues  spoken  around  the  Rios,  Gila  and  Colorado,  philological 
science  hitherto  possesses  only  vague  information. 


CLASSIFICATION     OF    TONGUES.  83 

At  the  centre  of  America  we  meet  with  four  families,  viz :  the 
family  Quicho-Maya,  of  which  the  chief  representatives  are  the  idioms 
of  Yucatan; — the  second  family  is  exhibited  in  the  Otomi,  which  at 
first  had  been  erroneously  made  a  completely  separate  type, — the 
third  is  the  Lenea  family,  principally  spread  over  the  territory  of 
Honduras,  —  and  lastly,  the  fourth  family  is  represented  by  the 
Nahuatl,  otherwise  called  the  ancient  Mexican ;  of  which  we  possess 
literary  monuments  written  in  a  kind  of  hieroglyphics. 

The  Quicken,  or  Quichoa — language  of  the  Incas — comprehends 
several  dialects,  of  which  the  principal  is  the  Aymara.  The  Quichoa, 
of  all  the  families  of  the  ~Hew  "World,  possesses  most  prominently  the 
polysynthetical  character.  The  Guarani  family,  to  which  the  Chilian 
attaches  itself,  manifests  a  very  great  grammatical  development.  It 
was  spread  throughout  the  south-  and  east  of  austral  America,  and 
was  spoken  over  a  vast  expanse  of  territory.  Finally,  the  two  fami- 
lies, the  Pampean  or  Moxo,  and  the  Cardib,  occupy,  in  the  hierarchi- 
cal ladder  of  American  idioms,  the  very  lowest  rungs.  In  these  there 
is  excessive  simplicity, — for  instance,  in  the  G-alibi,  spoken  by  savage 
tribes  of  the  French  Guyana,  and  which  belongs  to  the  Caribbean 
family.  One  finds  in  it  neither  gender  nor  case;  the  plural  is  ex- 
pressed simply  by  the  addition  of  the  word  papo,  signifying  all,  and 
serving  at  one  and  the  same  time  for  the  noun  as  well  as  the  verb. 
In  this  last  part  of  a  discourse,  the  persons  are  not  discriminated ; 
and  the  same  form  acts  in  the  plural,  no  less  than  in  the  singular, 
for  the  three  persons. 

American  languages  have,  then,  also  passed  through  very  different 
phases  of  development;  but,  even  when  they  have  attained,  as  in 
Quichoa  and  the  Quarani,  a  remarkable  degree  of  elaboration,  they 
have  been  unable,  notwithstanding,  to  overcome  the  elementary 
forms  upon  which  they  had  been  scaffolded. 

In  the  presence  of  such  existing  testimonies,  of  this  gradual 
development,  it  becomes,  henceforth,  impossible  to  conclude  any- 
thing from  those  analogies  signalized  between  American  and 
African  languages,  as  regards  imagined  filiation.  The  aspect  of 
two  vast  linguistic  groups,  placed  at  distances  so  remote,  might  have 
engendered  a  supposition  of  some  links  of  proximate  relationship 
between  the  populations  speaking  them,  if,  in  view  of  their  physique, 
the  Indians  of  the  New  World,  and  the  negroes  and  Hottentots  of 
Africa,  were  not  so  entirely  different.  But,  seeing  that  we  have 
established  each  floor  (Stage)  of  linguistic  civilization — if  one  may  so 
speak — we  cannot  admit  that  these  tongues  have  been  transported 
from  Africa  to  America,  or,  at  least,  that  their  grammar  already 


84  ON    THE    DISTRIBUTION    AND 

governed  the  idioms  spoken  by  such  supposititious  emigrants.  Simi- 
litude between  the  two  groups  shows  us  merely,  that  the  native  abo- 
rigines of  Africa  and  of  America  possessed  an  analogous  faculty  of 
language ;  and  that  neither  could  rise  above  a  certain  level,  which,  at 
first  sight,  may  have  been  taken  for  a  common  characteristic,  and  as 
a  sign  of  filiation. 


section  m. 

The  sketch  we  have  just  given  of  the  families  of  tongues  spread 
over  the  globe's  surface  has  led  us  to  observe,  that  the  linguistic 
families  coincide  (with  tolerable  exactitude)  with  the  more  trenched 
divisions  of  mankind. 

Each  superior  race  of  man  is  represented  by  two  families  of  lan- 
guages corresponding  to  their  largest  brancbes,  viz:  the  White  race, 
or  Caucasic,  by  the  Indo-European  and  Semitic  tongues ; — the  Yellow 
race  by  the  monosyllabic  and  the  Ougro-Tartar  tongues,  otherwise 
called  "Finno- Japonic."  To  the  Black  race  correspond  the  tongues 
of  Africa; — to  the  Red  race,  the  tongues  of  America; — to  the  Malayo- 
Polynesian  races,  the  tongues  of  that  name; — to  the  Australian 
race,  the  idioms  of  Australasia.  ITo  more  of  homogeneity  is  beheld, 
however,  amongst  the  languages  spoken  by  those  inferior  races  inha- 
biting Africa,  America,  Oceanica,  or  Australia. 

The  multifarious  crossings  of  these  primitive  races,  —  crossings 
that  may  be  called  those  of  the  secondary  race-floor — are  represented 
by  families  that  possess  characteristics  less  demarcated,  and  which 
participate  generally  of  the  two  families  of  idioms  spoken  by  the 
races  whose  intermixture  gave  birth  to  them. 

The  Dravidian  languages  partake  of  the  Ougro-Tartar  and  the 
monosyllabic  tongues.  The  Hamitic  languages  are  intermediate 
between  the  Semitic  and  the  African  tongues.  The  Hottentot  lan- 
guages hold  to  the  African  and  the  Polynesian  tongues ;  certain  lan- 
guages of  the  Soodan  offering,  also,  the  same  character,  but  with  a 
predominance  of  Polynesian  elements ;  whereas  it  is  the  African 
element  that  preponderates  in  Hottentot  idioms. 

The  apparition  of  these  grand  linguistical  formations  is,  therefore, 
as  ancient  as  that  of  the  races  themselves.  And,  in  fact,  speech  is 
with  man  as  spontaneous  as  locomotion, — as  the  instinct  of  clothing 
and  of  arming  oneself.  This  is  what  the  Bible  shows  us  in  the 
abridged  recital  it  gives  of  Creation.'  God  causes  to  pass  before 
A-DaM,  the-Man,  all  the  animals  and  all  the  objects  of  the  earth  (as 


CLASSIFICATION    OP    TONGUES.  85 

it  were,  in  a  cosmorama),  and  the-Man  gives  to  each  a  name.31  It  is 
impossible  to  declare  more  manifestly  that  speech  (language)  ia 
an  innate  and  primitive  gift.  From  the  instant  that  man  was  created, 
he  must  have  spoken,  by  virtue  of  the  faculty  he  had  received  from 
God. 

The  use  of  this  faculty  has  also  been  as  different  among  the 
diverse  races  of  mankind  as  that  of  all  other  faculties.  And,  in  the 
same  manner  that  there  have  been  races  pastoral,  agricultural,  pisca- 
tory and  hunting, — that  there  are  populations  grave,  and  populations 
volatile ;  adroit  and  cunning  tribes,  as  well  as  tribes  stupid  and  shal- 
low— so  there  have  been  races  with  language  developed  and  powerful, 
populations  that  have  attained  a  high  degree  of  perfection  in  speech ; 
whereas  others  have  very  quickly  found  their  development  arrested, 
— just,  indeed,  as  there  have  been,  and  ever  will  be,  races  pro- 
gressive and  races  stationary. 

We  are  unable  to  pierce  the  mystery  of  the  origins  of  humanity. 
"We  are  ignorant  as  to  a  process  by  which  God  formed  man,  and  the 
Bible  itself  is  mute  in  this  respect.  It  neither  resolves,  nor  indicates 
the  difficulties  inherent  in,  the  first  advent  of  our  species.  But,  it  ia 
very  evident  that,  in  speaking  of  mankind  in  general, — that  is  to 
say,  of  A-DaM;  for  such  is  the  sense  of  the  word  —  it  designates, 
according  to  Oriental  habits,  the  race  by  an  individual :  in  precisely 
the  same  method  that,  in  the  ethnic  geography  of  the  children  of 
Eoah  [Genesis  x),  it  represents  an  entire  people  by  a  single  name. 
Thus,  Genesis  speaks  to  us  only  of  the  genus  homo,  which  it  personifies 
in  an  individual  to  whom  it  attributes  the  supposed  instincts  of  the 
first  men.  This  being  at  present  settled,  it  cannot  be  concluded 
from  biblical  testimony  that  all  human  beings  spoke  one  and  the 
same  tongue  at  the  beginning,  —  any  more  than  we  can  conclude 
that  there  had  been  but  one  primitive  couple. 

From  the  origin  there  were  different  languages,  as  there  were  like- 
wise different  tribes ;  and  from  out  of  these  primitive  families  issued 
all  the  idioms  subsequently  spread  over  the  earth.  Because,  the 
faculty  of  speech  was,  at  its  origin,  coetaneous  with  the  birth  of  man- 
kind ;  and  linguistic  types  are  not  now  formed,  any  more  than  new 
races  of  men,  or  new  animals,  are  being  created.  Existing  types  be- 
become  altered,  modified.  They  cross  amongst  each  other  within 
certain  limits,  —  and  with  the  more  facility  according  as  they  may 

81  Genesis,  II,  19 : — "  Jehovah-Elohim  forma  de  terre  tous  les  animaux  des  champs,  tous 
les  oiseaux  du  ciel,  et  les  fit  venir  vers  I'homme  pour  qu'il  vit  a,  les  nommer ;  et  comme 
I'homme  nommerait  une  creature  anime'e,  tel  devait  etre  son  nom." — (Cahek's  Hebrew  text, 
L  p.  8.) 


86      ON    THE   DISTRIBUTION    AND    CLASSIFICATION    OF    TONGUES. 

already  possess  greater  affinity.  They  become  extinct  and  disap- 
pear: but  that  is  all.  The  work  of  creation  on  our  globe  is 
terminated;  and  all  the  invisible  dynamics  which  the  Creator  set 
in  motion,  in  order  to  people  this  physical  and  moral  world,  may 
indeed  preserve  that  which  they  have  produced ;  but  I'dge  du  retour 
for  them  has  arrived.  They  have  become  powerless  and  sterile 
for  creations  that  are  reserved,  without  doubt,  for  other  worlds. 

A.  M. 

Paris,  Library  of  the  Institute  —  April,  1856. 


ICONOGR APHIC    RESEARCHES.  87 


GHAPTEK  II. 

ICONOGRAPHIC    RESEARCHES 

ON  HUMAN  RACES  AND  THEIR  ART  ; 
BY  FRANCIS  PTJLSZKY. 


'  Tedd  a  durva  Scythat  a  Tiberishez,  es 

A  nagy  R6ma  fiat  Bosphorus  oblihez 

Barlang  leszen  amott  a  Capitolium 

'S  itt  uj'  R6ma  emelkedik." 
'Put  the  rude  Scythian  on  the  Tiber, 

And  the  son  of  great  Rome  on  the  Cimmerian  coast, 

There  the  Capitol  will  become  a  den, 

And  here  rises  a  new  Some."  (Berzsenyi.) 


Letter  to  Mr.  Geo.  It.  Cfliddon,  and  Dr.  J.  0.  Nott,  on,  the  Races  of 

Men  and  their  Art. 
My  Dear  Sirs: 

Reading  your  "  Types  of  Mankind,"  equally  valuable  for  consci- 
entious research  and  sound  criticism,  I  could  not  but  be  pleased  with 
your  felicitous  idea  of  supporting  ethnological  propositions  by  the 
testimony  of  copious  Egyptian,  Assyrian,  Persian,  Greek,  and  Chi- 
nese monuments,  in  order  to  prove  the  constancy  of  national  types, 
during  the  historical  period  of  antiquity,  by  authentic  representa- 
tions. Blumenbach  and  Prichard  only  cursorily  referred  to  ancient 
monuments;  your  publication  was  the  first1  to  call  Archaeology  into 
the  witness-box  for  cross-examination  in  the  question  of  races  and 

*  If  our  work,  published  early  in  1854,  may  take  credit  for  having  somewhat  extended 
and  popularized  this  method  of  research,  the  road  had  been  widely  opened,  ten  years  pre- 
viously by  Morton  (Crania  JEgypiiaca,  Philada.,  1844).  Subsequently  to  Morton,  the 
same  method  was  applied  with  singular  felicity  by  M.  Courtet  de  l'Isle  (Tableau  ethno- 
graphique  du  Genre  Humain;  8vo.,  Paris,  1849)  ;  but,  as  mentioned  in  "Types,"  (p.  724,)  I 
was  not  aware  of  M.  Codrtet's  priority  until  the  text  of  our  book  was  entirely  stereotyped. 
His  volume  has  become  so  rare,  that  I  was  unable  to  procure  a  copy  during  my  late  stay 
at  Paris,  1854-5.  A  portion,  however,  was  originally  published  under  the  title  of  "Icono- 
graphie  des  races  humaines,"  in  the  Illustration,  Oct.  and  Nov.,  1847:  and  another  formed 
part  of  the  interesting  discussions  of  the  Societe  Elhnologiquc  de  Paris,  on  the  "  Distinctive 
Characteristics  of  the  White  and  of  the  Black  races;"  Seance  du  25  Juin,  1847.  (See  the 
Bulletin  of  that  Society,  parent  of  those  in  London  and  New  York,  Annee  1847,  Tome  lr, 
pp.  181-206,  and  284.)     G.  R.  G. 


88 


ICONOGRAPHIC    RESEARCHES 


Fig.  1. 


nationalities.2  But,  whilst  you  judiciously  selected  the  most  charac- 
teristic reliefs  of  Egypt  and  Assyria  from  the  classical  works  of 
Champollion,  Rosellini,  Lepsius,  Botta,  and  Layard;  all  Etruscan, 
Roman,  Hindoo,  and  American  antiquities  were  excluded  from  the 
"Types;"  and  I  felt  somewhat  disappointed  when  I  found,  that  as  to 
your  Greek  representations  you  were  altogether  mistaken.  You 
published,  on  the  whole,  five  busts3  belonging  strictly  to  the  times 
and  nations  of  classical  antiquity,  but  there  is  scarcely  one  among 
them  on  which  sound  criticism  could  bestow  an  unconditional 
approval. 

You  may  find  that  I  am  rather  hard  upon  you,  as  even  your  critic 
in  the  Athenaeum  Francais*  objected  only  to  one  of  them.  Still,  ami- 
cus Nott,  amicus  GrLiDDON,  sed  magis  arnica  Veritas ;  and  I  hope  that 
if  you  have  the  patience  to  read  my  letter  with  attention,  you  will 
yourselves  plead  guilty. 

The  busts  which  I  am  to  review  are  the  alleged  portraits  of  Lycue- 
gus,  the  Spartan  legislator,  of  Alexander  the  Great,  of  Eratos- 
thenes, of  Hannibal,  and  of  Juba  I.,  king  of  ISTumidia. 

I.  As  to  the  great  Lacedsemonian  lawgiver,  you  borrowed  his  por- 
trait from  Pouqueville,5  who  took  it  from 
Ennio  Quirino  Visconti.6  It  cannot  be 
traced  farther  back.  The  celebrated 
Italian  archaeologist,  publishing  that  head 
of  a  marble  statue  in  the  Vatican,  freely 
acknowledges  that  he  has  scarcely  any 
authority  for  attributing  it  to  Lycurgus, 
by  saying  that  he  thinks  the  statue  might 
be  a  portrait  of  the  famous  one-eyed  legis- 
lator,— inasmuch  as  the  conformation  of 
the  left  eye  and  cheek  is  different  from 
the  right  side  of  the  head ;  and,  according 
to  him,  such  want  of  symmetry  charac- 
terizes a  man  blind  of  one  eye.7    I  leave 

1  Blumenbach  read  a  lecture :  De  veterum  urlificium  anatomies  perili<e  laude  limitanda,  cele- 
branda  vero  eorum  in  charactere  gentilitio  ezprimendo  accuratione,  at  Gottingen,  on  the  19th  of 
March,  1823,  but  unhappily  it  never  was  published.  The  notice  in  the  Gottingen  Gelehrle 
Anze.igen  1823  (p.  1241,)  mentions  only  that  he  dwelt  upon  the  correctness  of  the  represen- 
tations of  negroes,  Jews,  and  Persians,  on  ancient  monuments;  and  remarked  that  no  effigy 
of  the  Mongolian  type  has  ever  been  found  on  them.  Prichard  devotes  two  pages  (235  and 
236  of  his  lid  volume),  to  the  remains  of  Egyptian  painting  and  sculpture ;  but  he  ignores 
Rosellini's  work,  and  quotes  from  the  antiquated  Denon  and  the  Description  de  VEgypie. 

3  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  104  and  136. 

4  Athencsum  Francais,  Paris,  25  March  1854,  p.  264. 

»  TJnivers  pitloresque,  Grece,  pi.  84  ; — Types,  p.  104,  fig.  4. 

*  Iconographie  grecque,  I.  pi.  VIII.  2.  '  Ibid.  p.  131  of  the  Milan  edition. 


ON    HUMAN     RACES     AND    THEIR    ART.  89 

it  altogether  to  your  critical  judgment  whether  such  an  argument  is 
sufficient  for  baptizing  the  old  statue  and  calling  it  Lycurgus,  whilst 
the  deformity  of  the  face  might  he  the  result  of  the  clumsiness  or 
inadvertence  of  the  sculptor,  or  might  represent  any  other  half-faced 
personage.  But  even  had  Visconti  proved  that  the  effigy  in  ques- 
tion was  really  meant  for  Lycurgus,  being  a  copy  of  the  statues  men- 
tioned by  Pausanias,8  still,  the  features  could  not  be  taken  for  a  real 
portrait,  nor  could  they  have  any  value  for  ethnology,  since,  impos- 
sible as  it  is  to  fix  the  date  of  Lycurgus  accurately,  it  is  universally 
agreed  that  he  lived  at  the  close  of  the  heroic  and  before  the  dawn 
of  the  Instorical  age,  when  art  was  nearly  unknown  to  Greece.  A 
chasm  of  at  least  three  centuries  separates  him  from  the  earliest 
reliefs  and  coins  we  possess.  It  is  therefore  preposterous  to  believe 
in  portraits  of  Lycurgus  in  the  present  sense  of  the  word.  Accord- 
ingly, Visconti  admits  that  the  portrait  in  question  was  created  (!) — 
like  that  of  Homer, — on  national  traditions  by  artistic  imagination. 
The  Greeks,  with  their  strongly  developed  feeling  for  beauty,  were 
not  at  all  shocked  by  such  ideal  portraits ;  their  artists,  down  to  the 
time  of  Alexander  the  Macedonian ;  and  even  beyond  his  epoch,  did 
not  care  much  for  material  likeness,  and  were  only  intent  upon 
making  the  expression  of  the  features  answer  to  the  traditional  cha- 
racter of  the  person  represented.  Thus,  for  instance,  they  created 
the  effigies  of  the  "  seven  sages,"  and  of  JEsopus,  which  once  adorned 
the  Villa  of  Cassius,  and  now  form  one  of  the  chief  attractions  of 
the  Villa  Albani  at  Rome.9  The  most  celebrated  of  those  imaginary 
portraits  is  the  magnificent  bust  of  Homer,10  equally  known  in 
antiquity  and  in  modern  times ;  for  Pliny11  remarks,  speaking  of  this 
custom,  that  "  even  effigies  which  do  not  exist,  are  invented,  and 
excite  the  desire  to  know  the  features  not  transmitted,  as  is  the  case 
with  Homer."  Pausanias  proves  that  in  his  time  there  were  portraits 
of  Lycurgus  existing ;  of  course  invented  in  a  similar  way :  but  we 
may  safely  state  that,  even  the  created  effigies  of  the  old  law-giver 
were  not  of  a  constant  type.  The  Spartans,  at  the  epoch  of  their 
complete  subjection  to  Rome,  began  to  adorn  their  copper  coins  with 
the  head  of  Lycurgus,  inscribing  them  with  his  name  in  order  that 
no  mistake  should  be  possible ;  but  Visconti,  who  published  two  of 
them,12  says,  that  they  do  not  resemble  one  another. 

Thus  we  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  certainty  and 
but  little  probability  about  the   head  published  by  you,  as  to  its 

•  Pausanias,  lib.  iii.  c.  14.  9  Visconti,  Iconographie  grecque,  1  pi.  ix.  x.  xi.  xii. 

"  The  best  of  them  is  at  the  Studj  at  Naples;  a  good  one  in  the  British  Museum, 
li  Historia  Natures,  xxxv.  \  2.  "  Visconti,  Icon,  gr.,  1  pi.  viii.  5,  6. 


90 


ICONOGRAPHIC    RESEARCHES 


having  ever,  before  Visconti,  been  imagined  to  represent  Lycurgus ; 
and  that  in  no  case  could  it  be  taken  for  anything  else  than  a  fancy- 
portrait,  not  more  to  be  trusted  than  the  statue  of  Columbus, 
commonly  called  the  "  ninepin-player,"  before  your  Capitol,  or  the 
relief  portrait  of  Daniel  Boone  in  the  Rotunda  at  Washington. 
II.  Tour  portrait  of  Alexander  the  Great,  likewise  from  Pou- 
queville,13  is  by  far  more  authentic  than  the 
pretended  likeness  of  Lycurgus.  The  origi- 
nal marble  bust,  of  which  you  give  a  copy,  is 
now  placed  in  the  Louvre  at  Paris,  as  a  me- 
morial of  Napoleon  I. ;  who  received  it  as  a 
present  from  the  Spanish  Ambassador,  the 
Chevalier  dAzara.  The  accomplished  Che- 
valier caused  a  panegyrical  dedicatory  in- 
scription to  be  sculptured  on  the  side  of  this 
bust,  before  presenting  it  to  the  modern 
Alexander.  The  Bourbons,  unconsciously 
following  the  traditions  of  the  Emperor  Cara- 
calla,  and  of  several  Egyptian  Pharaohs,  or- 
dered the  mention  of  their  obnoxious  prede- 
cessor to  be  obliterated  on  this  monument ;  but  traces  of  the  destroyed 
inscription  sufficiently  record  the  resentment  and  bad  taste  of  those 
who  had  "  rien  oublie  ni  rien  appris."  The  bust  was  originally  found 
near  Tivoli,  the  ancient  Tibur,  in  the  year  1779,  bearing  the  inscrip- 
tion 

AAEIANAP02 

*iAinnnY 

MAKEA 

The  form  of  the  letters  shows,  according  to  Visconti,"  that  this 
excellent  piece  of  sculpture  could  not  have  been  contemporaneous 
with  the  conqueror  of  Persia ;  and  that  it  probably  belongs  to  the 
last  epoch  of  the  Roman  Republic,  or  to  the  beginning  of  the  Empire. 
Still,  as  the  features  of  the  Macedonian  king  were  in  his  life-time 
immortalized  by  such  eminent  artists  as  Apelles,  Pyrgoteles  and 
Lysippus ;  and  since  his  portraits  served  as  seals  and  emblems  of  coins 
soon  after  his  death,  it  may  seem  tolerably  certain,  that  the  marble 
bust  in  question  gives  us  really  the  likeness  of  the  conqueror.  Yet 
there  remains  one  difficulty  about  it.  The  bust  having  been  found 
in  a  mutilated  state,  the  broken  nose  was  restored,  without  consulting 
the  coins  of  Lysimachus,  one  of  the  generals  and  successors  of 
Alexander,  who  had  the  portrait  of  his  late  master  put  on  them. 


1  Grece,  pi.  85  -.—Types,  p.  104,  fig. 


11  Icon,  grecque,  II.  page  47. 


ON    HUMAN    RACES    AND    THEIR    ART.  91 

Thus  the  restoration  altered  the  features  a  little,  a  somewhat  longer 
nose  being  attached  to  the  bust,  than  the  earlier  effigies  on  coins, 
statues,  and  mosaics  warrant.  "With  the  slight  exception,  therefore, 
that  the  tip  of  the  nose  is  too  long  and  too  pointed,  the  portrait  in 
the  "Types"  ought  to  satisfy  sound  criticism.  Still,  Staatsrath 
Koehler,  the  renowned  but  presumptuous  Russian  archaeologist, 
hypercritically  rejects  the  Azara-bust,  as  of  no  use  to  iconography;15 
but  as  he  omits  the  reasons  for  his  harsh  sentence,  he  must  allow  us 
to  be  so  malicious,  and  to  infer,  from  the  date  of  his  essay,16  written 
during  the  Russo-Persian  war,  that  he  was  disappointed  at  not  being 
able  to  discover  a  likeness  between  the  bust  of  the  great  Macedonian 
and  the  would-be  inheritor  of  his  schemes,  the  late  Czar  Nicholas  : 
at  the  same  time  that  French  archaeologists  maintain  that  Alexander, 
Augustus,  and  Ramesses,  bear  a  striking  likeness  to  Napoleon  I. 

But  if  the  Russian  archaeologist  went  too  far  on  the  side  of  hyper- 
criticism,  the  author  of  "Inscriptions  of  the  British  Museum,"  and 
the  arranger  of  the  Egyptian  Court  in  the  Sydenham  Crystal  Palace, 
err  considerably  more  on  the  other  side ;  having  been  taken  in  by 
one  of  the  most  barefaced  archaeological  impostures  of  modern 
times.  In  1850,  a  4to  volume  (360  pages  text  and  LXI  plates)  was 
published  at  Didot's  by  Mons.  J.  Barrois,  under  the  suspicious  title 
of  "  Dactylologie  et  Langage  Primitif;"  in  which  pi.  LLX  gives 
"the  portrait  of  Alexander  taken  during  his  life  (represents  de  son 
vivant)  from  a  bas-relief  painted  in  four  colours  by  Apelles,  (!),  and 
found  in  1844  under  the  sand  of  a  subterraneous  tomb  at  Cercasore 
on  the  Nile."  Since  this  wonderful  book  was  printed  for  private 
circulation,  and  did  not  get  into  the  book-market,  criticism  remained 
silent;  but  the  portrait  having  been  introduced  into  the  Crystal 
Palace,  we  must  protest  against  the  clumsy  forgery  which  attributes 
an  Egyptian  bas-relief  to  Apelles  the  Greek  painter.  Besides,  though 
its  style  is  Pharaonic,  the  eye  is  foreshortened  in  the  Greek  way ; 
the  Egyptian  cartouche  is  false ;  whilst  the  Greek  inscription, 
wrongly  spelt,17  is  neither  Egyptian  nor  Greek,  and  the  form  of  its 
letters  is  partly  archaic,  partly  Latin.  I  was  shocked  at  the  very 
first  sight  of  such  a  cast  exhibited  among  copies  of  the  best  remains 
of  Egypt ;  and  afterwards  learned  from  Mr.  Gliddon,  that  it  is  gene- 
rally known  in  Paris,  how  the  relief  (with  its  companion,  which 
purports  to   represent  Heph^estion),   had  been  manufactured   ex- 

"  Abhandlung  iiber  die  geschniltenen  Steine,  &o.     St.  Petersburg,  1851,  p.  10, — referring 
to  his  essay  in  Bottiger's  Archceologie  und  Kunst,  Band  1,  page  13. 
11  The  inscription  runs  as  follows : 

ALEK^ANDP* 
YIO*  AMOYN* 


92 


ICONOGRAPHIC    RESEARCHES 


Fig.  3. 


pressly  to  entrap  M.  Barrois,  the  wealthy  amateur,  who  does  not 
believe  at  all  in  Champollion,  and  consequently  bought  it  for  6000 
francs.  It  was  certainly  beyond  the  expectation  of  the  French 
forgers  that  they  should  cheat  two  English  archaeologists  also. 
IH.  Eratosthenes  of  Cyrene  in  Africa,  the  famed  Greek  librarian 
of  king  Ptolemy  Evergetes  at  Alexandria,  the 
greatest  Astronomer,  Geographer,  and  Chrono- 
logist  of  his  time,  would  indeed  deserve  a  place 
of  honor  in  any  ethnographical  publication ;  but, 
unhappily,  there  exists  no  antique  likeness  of 
that  eminent  man,  although  the  Chevalier  Bunsen 
prefixed  the  ideal  drawing  of  a  Greek  bust  to  the 
second  volume  of  his  "JEgyptens  Stelle  in  der 
"Weltgeschichte."18  Yet  this  effigy  is  altogether  a 
modern  fancy -portrait,  which  originates  solely 
from  the  desire  of  the  learned  Chevalier  to  ex- 
press his  veneration  for  the  Sage  of  Cyrene.  I 
have  suspected  that  it  is  not  through  accident,  but 
by  design,  that  the  snub-nose  of  the  German  edition  has  been  twisted 

into  a  somewhat  aquiline  form  for 
Longman's  English  translation  of 
the  same  work.  Possibly,  Bun- 
sen,  in  fear  lest  his  authority  might 
introduce  a  false  Eratosthenes  into 
good  society — as  really  has  hap- 
pened in  the  "  Types," — took  this 
indirect  method  of  unmaking  the 
creature  of  his  own  imagination. 

IV.  The  portrait  of  Hannibal 
was  copied  for  the  "  Types,"  on  the 
faith  of  the  "Univers  pittoresque," 
(Afrique  ancienne,  Carthage),  a  col- 
lection of  several  works  by  differ- 
ent authors  of  different  merit. 
Thus,  for  instance,  next  to  the 
description  of  Ancient  Egypt  by 
Champollion-Eigeac,  and  of  China  by  Pauthier,  we  find  Italy 
described  by  the  shallow  Artaud,  and  Greece  by  Pouqueville. 
However,  the  alleged  portrait  of  the  Carthaginian  hero  did  not 
answer  your  ethnographic  expectations  in  any  way,  not  being  of  the 


Fig.  4. 


18  Hamburg,  1845,  frontispiece.  Compare  the  one  in  Egypt's  Place  in  Ufiiversal  History, 
London,  1854,  II.,  and  p.  xxi.  The  same  genius  for  invention  has  supplied  Arehfeology 
■with  an  equally-authentic  portrait  of  Manetho:  —  Op.  cit.,  Drittes  Buck,  frontispiece. 


OK  ETTIAN  RACES  AND   THEIR   ART.  93 

Shemitic  cast;  and  you  recognized  at  once  the  highest  Caucasian 
type  so  strongly  marked,  in  his  face  as  to  lead  to  the  suggestion, 
"  that  if  his  father  was  a  Phcenico-Carthaginian,  one  would  suspect 
that  his  mother,  as  among  the  Ottomans  and  Persians  of  the  present 
day,  must  have  heen  an  imported  white  slave,  or  other  female  of  the 
purest  Japhetic  race."19  This  remark,  embodying  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  Japhetic  cast  of  the  features,  was  happily  added  to  the 
"portrait;"  which  can  he  found  on  some  elegant  silver  coins  accom- 
panied by  a  Phoenician  inscription.  From  the  time  of  Fulvius 
Ursinus20  it  was  always  taken  for  the  efUgy  of  Hannibal,  until  Pel- 
lerin,21  and  Eckhel,  m  proved  that  these  coins  are  not  Carthaginian, 
but  Cilician  and  Phoenician.  "In  1846,"  says  the  reviewer  of 
"Types,"  in  the  Atheneeum  Frangais,  "the  Due  de  Luynes  found  out 
that  it  was  the  portrait  of  a  Satrap  of  the  king  of  Persia,  who 
governed  Tarsus  in  the  time  of  Xenophou;  and  thus,"  he  adds,  "in 
the  effigy  published  by  Messrs.  Gliddon  and  Nott,  type,  country, 
epoch,  and  race,  are  all  mistaken" ! M  A  sweeping  conclusion  indeed ; 
still,  it  is  not  complete  enough ;  seeing,  we  may  add,  that  the  reviewer 
himself  is  likewise  mistaken.  Had  he  studied  the  Essay  of  the  Due 
de  Luynes  with  sufficient  care,  he  would  have  found  that  the  head, 
formerly  believed  to  be  the  effigy  of  Hannibal,  and  as  such  prefixed 
to  most  of  the  editions  of  Silius  Italicus,  is  not  at  all  a  portrait,  but 
the  ideal  representation  of  a  hero ;  since  it  is  not  only  found  on  the 
silver  coins  of  Dernes  of  Phoenicia  (or  rather,  according  to  "W.  H. 
Waddington,  of  Datames  of  Cilicia),24  but  likewise  on  the  coins  of 
Pharnabazus,  the  powerful  Satrap  of  Phrygia  and  Lydia,  son-in-law 
to  Artaxerxes  Mnemon.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be  meant  for  either 
of  them ;  so  much  the  less,  as  there  is  no  example  of  any  Satrap 
stamping  coin  with  his  own  portrait. 

Visconti,  in  his  Iconogrcvphie  grecquef5  attributes  a  totally  different 
bust  to  Hannibal.  Fully  aware  that  the  effigy  on  the  above-men- 
tioned silver  coins  could  not  represent  the  illustrious  Carthaginian, 
he  did  not  like  to  lose  the  illusion  that  we  possess  such  an  interesting 
portrait;  especially  as  the  elder  Pliny  complains25  that  "two  statues 
were  erected  to  Hannibal  in  the  city,  since  so  many  foreign  nations 
had  been  received  into  communion  with  Pome,  that  all  former  dif- 
ferences between  them  were  abolished."  Accordingly,  Visconti 
attributes  a  small  bronze  bust  to  the  greatest  enemy  of  the  Romans ; 

■*  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  136,  fig.  37;  and  Southern  Quarterly  Review,  Charleston,  S.  C,  Oct. 
1854,  p.  294,  note.  M  Atheneeum  Francois,  Mars,  1854,  p.  264. 

M  Imagines  illustr.  virorum,  pi.  63.  •*  Atheneeum  Frangais,  Fevrier  1856,  p.  12. 

"  Recueil,  iii.  p.  59.  ,s  Vol.  iii.  pi.  xvi. 

"  Doctrina  nummorum  veterum,  iii.  p.  412.        K  Hist.  Nat.  xxxiv.  \  15. 


94  ICONOGRAPHIC  RESEARCHES 

because,  having  been  found  at  Pompeii  together  with  the  bust  of 
Scipio  Africanus,  it  might  have  been  its  companion.  He  discovers 
an  African  cast  in  the  features  of  the  bust,  although  he  does  not 
enable  us  to  understand  what  African  peculiarity  he  means ;  and  he 
forgets  that  Hannibal  ought  to  portray  the  true  Shemitic,  not  any 
African  type.  Visconti  refers  likewise  to  the  peculiar  head-dress  of 
the  bust,  as  being  analogous  to  that  of  king  Juba;  but  Juba  was  a 
Numidian,  (inheriting  some  Berber  blood,  probably,)  not  a  Cartha- 
ginian by  lineage ;  and  the  resemblance  is  altogether  imaginary. 
Lastly,  he  identifies  the  features  of  the  bronze  with  those  of  a  fine 
bearded  and  helmeted  head  often  found  on  gems,27  and  traditionally 
ascribed  to  Hannibal,  because  one  of  the  copies  bears  evidently  the 
half-effaced  inscription  HA . . .  BA .  .^  Unfortunately  for  Visconti, 
the  gems  and  the  bronze  bust  have  not  one  single  feature  in  common 
between  them ;  and  we  are  even  able  to  trace  the  origin  of  the  tradi- 
tion and  of  the  inscription  mentioned  by  the  renowned  author  of  the 
"  Iconographie  "  —  to  a  rather  modern  date.  There  exists  a  cele- 
brated colossal  marble  statue  in  the  ante-room  of  the  Capitoline  Mu- 
seum, which  had  always  puzzled  antiquaries.  It  represents  a  bearded 
warrior,  with  a  stern  and  majestic  countenance ;  and  would  have 
been  taken  for  Mars,  did  we  not  know,  that  all  the  statues  of  the  god 
of  war,  with  the  exception  of  the  earliest  archaic  representations, 
were  beardless.  Another  designation  was  therefore  wanted;  and 
inasmuch  as  among  the  adornments  of  the  magnificent  armour  of 
the  colossus,  two  elephant  heads  occupy  a  pi'ominent  place,  he  was 
called  Pyrrhus,  and  sometimes  Hannibal, — both  generals  having 
made  use  of  elephants  in  their  wars  against  Rome.  The  gems  men- 
tioned by  Visconti  are  evidently  antique  copies  of  the  head  of  the 
Capitoline  statue,  from  which  they  obtained  the  name.  As  to  the 
inscription  of  the  Florentine  gem  mentioned  by  Gori,  we  can  affirm 
that  it  is  a  mediaeval  forgery;  because,  on  another  repetition  of  the 
same  head,29  we  find  an  analogous  imposition,  viz :  the  same  Phoeni- 
cian letters  which  are  struck  on  the  Cilician  coins  of  Datames,  and 
were  transferred  from  the  medal  to  the  gem  by  some  mediseval 
engraver  under  the  (false)  belief  that  they  read:  "Hannibal."  Be- 
sides,— the  Capitoline  statue  and  the  gems  resembling  it  are  no  por- 
traits at  all ;  they  have  ideal  features,  and  represent  Zeus  Areios,  the 
martial  Jupiter,  as  beheld  on  the  coins  of  the  town  Iasus  in  Caria,30 

"  Gori.  Mus.  Flor.,  11,  12.  ■  Gori,  Inscriptions  per  Etrur.,  1  pi.  10,  p.  4. 

M  Winokelmann,  Pierres  gravies  du  feu  Baron  Stosch,  p.  415,  nos.  43:— Raspe,  Catalogue, 
p.  559,  No.  9598. 

30  Streeee,  Abhandl.  der  philologischen  Classe  der  Munchner  Academie,  Theil  1,  Tafel  4, 
No.  5. 


ON  HUMAN  RACES  AND  THEIR  ART. 


95 


no  less  than  on  several  unpublished  bronze  statuettes  in  different 
collections. 

V.  It  is  more  difficult  to  object  to  the  portrait  of  Juba  I.,  king  of 
Nuniidia ;  the  original  of  the  head  published  by  you31  being  the  type 
of   a   silver    coin  which    bears    the 

Roman     inscription     "  Juba    Rex."  Flg'  5- 

Still,  an  anonymous  archaeologist, 
(Steinbiichel,)32  suggests,  that  this  ef- 
figy, with  its  peculiar  African  head- 
dress, might  represent  an  African  Ju- 
piter, rather  than  a  king,  since  his 
features  are  somewhat  ideal,  and  the 
sceptre  on  the  shoulder  of  the  bust  is 
an  attribute  of  Jupiter,  or  of  Juno, 
exceptionally  only  given  to  kings. 
As  your  object  in  exhibiting  the  por- 
trait of  Juba  was  principally  to  show, 
to  some  illiterate  Philagthiopians,  that 
the  inhabitants  of  Northern  Africa 
were  not  negroes,  the  explanation  of 

Steinbiichel  becomes  a  still  stronger  argument  for  your  views.  If 
it  can  be  maintained,  then  the  published  head  is  not  the  effigy  of  an 
individual  Mauritanian  king,  by  descent  and  marriage  closely  allied 
to  several  Greek  dynasties  (for  instance,  to  the  Ptolemies),  but  is  the 
representative  type  of  the  population  of  the  northern  shores  of 
Africa ;  and  the  slight  modification  of  the  Arab  features,  observed  in 
his  face,  becomes,  therefore,  a  new  argument  for  the  affinity  of  Ber- 
ber and  Shemitic  races.  The  peculiar  head-dress  of  the  bust  is  men- 
tioned as  African  by  Strabo,33  who  says  that  the  same  costume  pre- 
vailed all  along  the  northern  coast  of  Africa  up  to  Egypt,  where  it 
borders  on  Libya.  Silius  Italicus  describes  it  very  characteristically 
as  a  rigid  bonnet  formed  by  long  hair  overshadowing  the  forehead.34 
We  see  it  on  the  triumphal  arch  of  the  Emperor  Constantine,  as  dis- 
tinguishing the  Numklian  auxiliary  horsemen ; 35  and  it  seems  that  it 
extended  even  beyond  the  limits  mentioned  by  Strabo,  since  it  is 
found  upon  Egyptian  reliefs  representing  Nubians  as  well  as  full- 
blooded  Negroes ;  for  instance,  compare  "Types,"  page  249,  and  figs. 
166,  167,  168,  169,  170,  and  171. 

VI.  Besides  these  effigies  belonging  to  the  domain  of  Greek  art, 

31  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  136,  fig.  38: — Afrique  Ancienne,  Carthage. 
ffl  Katalog  einer  Sammlung  geschnittener  Steine,  Wien,  1834,  p.  11,  No.  144. 
33  Strabo,  xvii.  p.  528.  *■  Belloki,  Arcus  triumph. 

"  Pcnicorum,  lib.  1,  v.  404 


96  ICONOGRAPHIC  RESEARCHES 

we  find  in  the  "  Types"36  the  Egyptian  portrait  of  the  famous  Cleo- 
patra, which  undoubtedly  gives  us  a  most  charming  effigy  of  this 

refined,  sensual,  intriguing   Queen; 
Fis-  6-  last  scion   of   an  illustrious   Mace- 

donian race,  who  had  witnessed  at 
her  feet  Julius  Csesar  and  Mark  An- 
tony, and  who  for  a  short  time  might 
well  have  believed  herself  the  mis- 
tress of  the  Eastern  world.'  Never- 
theless, doing  full  justice  to  the 
Egyptian  artist,  we  cannot  help  re- 
marking that,  though  all  the  Egyp- 
tian effigies  of  this  Queen,  through- 
out her  ancient  realm,  resemble  one 
another  perfectly — just  as  the  por- 
trait of  Queen  Victoria  has  remained 
entirely  unaltered  on  all  her  gold  sovereigns  for  the  last  twenty 
years,  —  Cleopatra's  Greek  coins  show  a  female  head  of  entirely  dif- 
ferent character ;  which,  if  really  her  portrait,  gives  us  but  a  poor  idea 
of  the  taste  either  of  Julius  Csesar  or  of  M.  Antony.  This  difference 
between  the  Greek  coins  and  Egyptian  effigies,  common  to  all  the 
Ptolemies,  is  rather  puzzling,  and  has  until  now  not  yet  been  satis- 
factorily explained;  but  Lepsius  is  expected  to  treat  this  question 
fully  and  frankly  in  the  monographic  portion  of  his  great  publica- 
tion.17 In  the  mean  time  it  is  only  fair  to  remark,  that  the  native 
Egyptian  portraits  of  some  of  these  kings,  ex.  gr.  Physcon,  agree 
far  better  with  their  historical  character,  than  do  their  effigies  on  the 
Greek  coins ;  which  are  all  somewhat  idealized,  until  we  reach  this 
last  Cleopatra,  who  was  evidently  a  much  finer  specimen  of  a  Queen 
in  reality,  than  she  appears  on  her  medals. 

Having  done  the  work  of  demolition  to  my  best  abilities,  allow 
me  now  to  review  the  human  races  in  respect  to  their  aptitude  for 
Art,  and  to  inquire  into  the  distinct  and  typical  characteristics  of 
national  art  among  the  different  types  of  men,  —  a  study  that  will 
establish  the  following  facts : 

I.  — ■  That  whilst  some  races  are  altogether  unfit  for  imitative  art, 
others  are  by  nature  artistical  in  different  degrees : 

II. —  That  the  art  of  those  nations  which  excelled  in  painting  and 
sculpture,  was  often  indigenous   and   always  national";   losing  not 

36  Op.cit.,  p.  104,  fig.  8 :  —  Rosellini,  Monumenti  dell'  Egitto,  M.  R.,  XXII.,  fig.  82.  I 
notice  your  judicious  alteration  of  the  eye. 

"  Cf.,  in  the  interim,  Lepsius,  Veber  einigeErgebnisseder  JEgyptischen  Denkmaler  fur  die 
Kennlniss  der  Ptolemiiergeschichte,  Berlin,  1853,  pp.  26,  29,  52. 


ON    HUMAN    RACES    AND    THEIR    ART.  97 

only  its  type  but  likewise  its  excellence  by  imitating  the  art  of  other 
nations : 

HI.  —  That  imitative  art,  derived  from  intercourse  with,  or  con- 
quest by,  artistic  races,  remained  barren,  and  never  attained  any 
degree  of  eminence, — that  it  never  survived  the  external  relations  to 
which  it  owed  its  origin,  and  died  out  as  soon  as  intercourse  ceased, 
or  when  the  artistic  conquerors  became  amalgamated  with  the 
unartistic  conquered  race : 

'  IV. — That  painting  and  sculpture  are  always  the  result  of  a  pecu- 
liar artistical  endowment  of  certain  races,  which  cannot  be  imparted 
by  instruction  to  unartistical  nations.  This  fitness,  or  aptitude  for 
art  seems  altogether  to  be  independent  of  the  mental  culture  and 
civilization  of  a  people ;  and  no  civil  or  religious  prohibitions  can 
destroy  the  natural  impulse  of  an  artistical  race  to  express  its  feelings 
in  pictures,  statuary,  and  reliefs. 

Tours,  very  truly, 

F.  P. 

London,  St.  Alban's  Villas,  Highqate  Rise, 
October,  1856. 


98  GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


I.  — GENERAL   REMARKS  ON  ICONOGRAPHY. 

"  Iconoqraphia  statuas  onmis  generis,  protomas,  picturas,  nrasivaque 
opera  describit.  Hanc  sexcenti  celebres  opifices  olim  coluerunt.  Imaginum 
amove,  inquit  Plinius,  ftagrasse  quosdam  testes  sunt  el  Atticus  ills  Ciceronis,  edito 
de  his  volumine,  et  Marcus  Varro  benignissimo  invento  insertis  voluminum  suorum 
Joscundilati,  nan  nominibus  tanium  septingeniorum  illustrium,  sed  et  aliquo  modo 
imaginibus,  non  passus  intercidere  figuras,  aut  vetustatem  cevi  contra  homines 
valere."  (Fabricius, Bibliographia  Anliq.,  1716,  p.  124.) 

"Whenever  the  metaphysical  Germans  speculate  about  the  philo- 
sophy of  history,  they  invariably  draw  a  broad  distinction  between 
the  progressive  races  (Culturvolker)  —  to  whom  mankind  is  indebted 
for  civilization,  for  the  advancement  of  sciences,  for  all  the  forms  of 
political  administration  of  society,  and  for  the  moral  elevation  of 
the  soul, — and  the  passive  races,  who  scarcely  possess  any  history  of 
their  own.  All  the  white  and  yellow,  and  a  few  brown  and  red 
nations,  are  put  down  among  the  former;  the  majority  of  the 
Browns,  the  hunter-tribes  of  the  Reds,  and  all  the  Blacks,  being 
classed  among  the  latter.  But  again,  among  the  progressive  races 
there  is  a  very  remarkable  difference  as  regards  their  part  in  history. 
The  Egyptians  and  Assyrians,  the  Shemitic  races  of  Phoenicia, 
Palestine  and  Arabia,  the  Persians,  Greeks,  Etruscans  and  Romans, 
and  lastly  the  Teutonic  and  neo-Latin  nations,  whether  pure  or 
blended  with  one  another  and  with  Celtic  elements,  took  in  succes- 
sion the  lead  of  mankind ;  whilst  the  pure  Celts,  the  Sclavonians, 
the  Einnie,  Turkoman,  Tartar  and  Berber  races,  remained  in  the 
background.  "We  need  not  say  that,  going  one  step  farther,  we  find 
the  mixed  populations  of  Great  Britain  and  of  North  America 
(commonly  but  wrongly  called  the  Anglo-Saxon  race),  and  the  equally 
mixed  population  of  France,  to  claim  to  be  at  the  head  of  the 
modern  progressive  races ;  scarcely  to  admit  the  equality  of  the  Ger- 
man proper;  and  to  be  fully  convinced  of  their  own  superiority  over 
Italians  and  Spaniards,  Dutch  and  Scandinavians,  Celts  and  Scla- 
vonians, Hungarians  and  Einns,  rejecting  altogether  the  pretensions 
of  Turks,  Arabs,  Persians  and  Hindoos,  to  civilization.  This  scale 
of  national  inequality  has  evidently  been  construed  with  regard  to 
the  political  power,  the  commercial  spirit,  the  literary  activity,  and 
the  application  of  the  results  of  science  to  manufactural  industry 
among  the  different  races.  Considered  from  the  point  of  view  of 
imitative  Art, — of  painting  and  sculpture,  —  the  result  will  be  some- 


GENERAL     REMARKS    ON     ICONOGRAPHY.  99 

what  different :  and  whilst  it  is  certain  that  art  has  never  flourished 
but  among  the  progressive  races,  we  shall  find  that  nations  to  whom 
we  are  indebted  for  some  of  the  most  important  discoveries,  and  to 
the  highest  truths  revealed  to  mankind,  are  altogether  deficient  in 
art,  —  as,  for  instance,  the  Shemites  without  exception ;  that  others, 
although  wielding  the  most  extensive  political  power,  such  as  the 
Romans  of  old,  the  Scandinavian  Northmen,  the  Anglo-Saxons,  the 
Sclavonic  races,  never  attained  a  high  development  of  painting  and 
sculpture,  and  were  surpassed  by  the  Greeks  of  yore,  and  by  the 
Italians  and  Spaniards,  the  Germans  and  Dutch.  History  teaches 
us  that  eminence  in  painting  and  sculpture  is  not  the  result  of  either 
high  mental  culture  or  political  power,  and  that  it  does  not  always 
accompany  the  refinement  and  wealth  of  nations.  "We  find  it  growing 
out  of  a  peculiar  disposition  of  some  nations,  predestined  as  it  were  for 
art;  whilst  other  races,  living  under  the  same  social,  climatic,  and 
political  conditions,  never  rise  artistically  to  represent  the  outward 
world  in  colors  or  in  plastic  forms.  And  again,  among  the  artistical 
nations  we  meet  with  the  most  remarkable  differences  in  treating 
the  same  subjects.  Some  strive  for  the  most  scrupulous  reproduc- 
tion of  nature,  and  cling  to  faithful  imitation;  others  are  creative, 
embellishing  whatever  they  touch :  some  show  a  deep  understanding 
and  love  of  nature ;  others  concentrate  their  power  exclusively  on 
the  representation  of  the  human  body :  some  excel  by  the  brilliancy 
and  harmony  of  their  coloring ;  others  charm  by  their  correctness  in 
plastical  forms :  but  all  of  them  express  their  nationality,  their  pecu- 
liar relation  to  God,  nature  and  mankind,  throughout  their  works. 
Therefore,  even  an  inexperienced  eye  catches  the  difference  between 
Egyptian  and  Assyrian,  Indian  and  Chinese,  Greek  and  Etruscan, 
Italian  and  German,  French  and  Spanish,  art:  and  the  artistically- 
educated  student  feels  no  difficulty  in  discriminating  the  minute 
distinctions  of  schools,  in  each  national  art ;  and  generally  discovers 
any  attempt  at  forging  pictures  and  statues.  The  inherent  and 
indelible  nationality  of  every  monument  of  art  is,  in  fact,  the  only 
safeguard  against  imposition ;  since  it  is  just  as  impossible  for 
Gibson  or  Powers  to  sculpture  an  antique  statue,  and  for  Sir  Charles 
Eastlake  or  Mr.  Ingres  to  paint  a  Eaphael  (or  even  a  Carlo  Dolce,  or 
any  second-rate  Italian  picture),  as  it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
Alfieri  to  write  a  play  of  Shakespeare,  and  for  any  New  Englander  to 
become  the  author  of  a  tragedy  which  could  pass  for  the  work  of 
Corneille.  Still,  to  establish  the  fact  that  art  is  always  national  and 
not  cosmopolitan,  we  must  pass  in  review  the  great  artistic  races 
from  the  time  of  the  Egyptian  pyramids  down  to  our  own  days  —  a 
period  of  some  five  thousand  years. 


100  GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


II.  —  EGYPTIAN    ART. 

AiiyvjMovS'  Isvai,  ho7a>%riv  bhbv  o^yaxiriv  it. 

(Homer,  Odvss.,  iv,  481.) 
"It  only  remains  to  say  "with  Homer, 
To  visit  Egypt's  land,  a  long  and  dangerous  way." 

(Strabo,  lib.  xvii.) 

The  earliest  of  all  monuments  of  art  carry  us  back  to  the  cradle  of 
our  civilization,  Egypt,  of  which  we  are  scarcely  accustomed  suffi- 
ciently to  appreciate  the  real  importance  to  the  history  of  mankind. 
We  speak  here  not  only  of  its  political  power  and  high  culture  under 
the  Pharaohs,  nor  only  of  the  literary  labors  of  the  critical  Alexan- 
drines under  those  Ptolemies  who  were  fond  to  be  protectors  of 
Greek  science ;  but  we  allude  likewise  to  the  fact  that,  long  after 
Egypt  had  merged  into  the  Roman  empire,  became  converted  to 
Christianity,  and  lost  all  tradition  of  independence,  still  its  peculiar 
national  character  was  not  swamped,  nor  its  tough  energy  broken. 
It  manifested  itself  strongly  enough  in  the  Athanasian  controversy, 
in  the  Monophysite  schism,  in  the  many  saints  and  legends  of  Chris- 
tian Egypt,  and  in  the  most  important  establishment  of  anachoret 
and  monastic  rule  which  originated  in  the  Thebais,  and  thence 
spread  all  over  the  world,  as  an  evidence  of  the  vitality  of  that 
nation  and  of  the  indelibility  of  its  moral  type. 

At  the  very  dawn  of  history  we  meet  in  Egypt  with  statues  and 
bas-reliefs  which,  according  to  the  hieroglyphic  inscriptions,  are 
certainly  contemporaneous  with  the  builders  of  the  pyramids ; 
though  it  is  rather  difficult  to  designate  the  precise  century  before 
our  era  to  which  they  belong,  because  the  Egyptians  made  no  use  of 
any  conventional  system  or  astronomical  cyclus  for  their  Chronology. 
Mariette's  discoveries  in  the  Serapeum  at  Memphis  have  proved 
that  no  Apis-cyclus  (equal  to  25  years)  was  ever  known  to  the  Egyp- 
tians,38 as  formerly  believed  by  scholars  from  the  interpretation  of  a 
passage  in  Plutarch.  As  to  the  Sothiae  cyclus,  it  was  certainly 
known,  but  its  use  for  chronology  remains  more  than  doubtful.39 
The  Egyptians  possessed  no  historical  era ;  they  dated  their  public 
documents  by  the  years  of  each  king's  reign.  With  such  a 
system  the  least  interruption  of  the  dates  vitiates  all  the  series. 

38  Mariette,  Renseignments  sur  les  soixanie-quatre  Apis,  in  the  Bui.  archeol.  de  V  Aihenaum 
Franqaia,  May- — Nov.,  1855: — Alfred  Maury,  Des  travaux  modernes  sur  l'Egypte 
Ancienne;"  Revue  des  Deux  3Iondes,  Sept.,  1855,  pp.  1060-3. 

39  Buhsen  (JEgyptens  Stelle,  iii.  p.  121,  seqq.)  tries  to  prove  a  Sothiao  Era  of  Menephthah  ; 
but  is  not  borne  out  by  any  astronomical  dates  on  the  monuments.  Vide  also  the  critical 
discoveries  of  Biot,  infra,  Chap.  V. 


GENERAL    REMARKS    OK    ICONOGRAPHY.         101 

Unfortunately  for  our  knowledge  of  Egyptian  chronology,40  the  list 
of  Dynasties  by  Manetho  has  reached  us  only  in  mutilated  extracts, 
and  the  ciphers  annexed  to  the  names  of  the  sovereigns  have  evi- 
dently been  tampered  with.  They  are  not  the  same  in  the  several 
extracts  of  Eusebius,  Syncellus,  and  Africanus ;  nor  do  they  tally 
with  the  original  hieroglyphic  documents.  So  much,  notwithstand- 
ing, we  can  say  with  mathematical  certainty, — now  that  the  com- 
plete chronology  of  the  XXUhd,  or  Bubastite,  Dynasty  has  been 
reconstructed  by  Mariette  from  the  documents  of  the  Serapeum  at 
Memphis,  —  that  the  'first  year  of  the  reign  of  Psammeticus  I., 
answers  to  the  94th  year  of  the  era  of  JVabonassar,  or  to  the  Julian 
year  654  B.  C.  The  same  series  of  documents  places  the  beginning 
of  the  reign  of  Tirhaka,  — ■  ally  to  king  Hezekiah  against  Senna- 
cherib of  Assyria,  —  towards  695  B.  C.41  But  here  the  dates  may  be 
already  uncertain  to  the  extent  of  one  or  two  years ;  and  beyond 
them  the  consecutive  series  of  precise  numerals  ceases  altogether. 
Some  further  dates  have  been  astronomically  determined,  but  the 
intermediate  figures  cannot  be  taken  for  more  than  approximate. 
For  the  XXJJnd  dynasty  we  obtain  a  synchronism,  and  a  means  of 
rectifying  chronology,  through  the  conquest  of  Jerusalem  by  She- 
shonk  L,  which  happened  in  the  5th  year  of  Behoboam,  king  of 
Judah.43  But  even  this  synchronism  does  not  yield  an  exact  date, 
inasmuch  as  the  chronology  of  the  Book  of  Kings  presents  some 
difficulties  not  yet  satisfactorily  resolved.43  Accordingly,  Newman 
places  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  in  the  year  950  B.  C.  ;44  Bunsen  in 
the  year  962  ;45  and  "Winer  in  the  year  970.46  At  any  rate,  it  is  certain 
that  king  Sheshonk  began  to  reign  before  the  middle  of  the  tenth 
century,  B.  C. 

An  astronomical  fact,  the  heliacal  rising  of  the  dog-star,  under 
Harnesses  JJJ.,  of  the  XXth  dynasty,  recorded  in  a  hieroglyphical  in- 
scription at  Thebes,  defines  the  epoch  of  this  king,  and  assigns  his 
place,  according  to  the  calculation  of  M.  Biot,  to  the  13th  century  B. 
C. ;  or  just  to  the  same  period  which  had  been  ascribed  to  him  before 
the  discovery  of  this  inscription,  solely  on  the  approximating  calcula- 
tion of  the  lists  as  rectified  by  the  monuments. 

40  See  for  the  following,  principally  De  Rouse's  Notice  Sommaire,  Muse'e  de  Louvre,  p. 
19  seqq. 

41  The  Hebrew  chronology  makes  it  nearer  to  B.  C.  710,  and  is  scarcely  reconcilable  with 
the  Egyptian  computation  about  this  synchronism. 

42  Cf.  Brugsch,  Reiseberichte  aus  jEgypten.  &c,  Berlin,  1855  —  "Die  Halle  der  Bubas- 
titen-Konigs  "  at  Karnac,  pp.  141-4. 

43  Newman,  History  of  the  Hebrew  Monarchy — Appendix  to  Chapter  IV.,  on  Chronology. 

44  Op.  cit.  p.  151  and  160.  «  ^gyptens  Stelle,  iii.  p.  122. 

46  Biblisches  Woerterbuch,  voce  Israel.  So  likewise  Sharpe,  Historic  Notes  on  the  Books  of 
the  0.  and  N.  Testaments,  London,  1854,  pp.  04,  88. 


102         GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 

For  the  XLXth  dynasty,  we  have  seemingly  again  a  synchronism, 
that  of  Moses  with  Ramesses  LT.,  and  with  Menephthah  LT. ;  hut  it  is 
of  little  value  for  exact  dates,  hecause  the  duration  of  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Hebrews  by  their  Judges  is  very  uncertain.  Biot's 
astronomical  calculation  is  more  valuable,  with  the  aid  of  which  we 
may  establish  that  Seti  I.,  father  of  Ramesses  the  great,  lived  about 
1500  B.  C  —  [say  15th  century  B.  0.];  and  hence  that  the  XVIIth 
dynasty  began  to  reign  towards  the  eighteenth  century  B.  C.  Never- 
theless, as  the  Vicomte  de  Rouge,  (whose  authority  we  follow  in 
preference  to  other  Egyptologists,  since  he  expresses  himself  most 
cautiously  in  dealing  with  chronological  figures,  and  avoids  hypo- 
theses) says,  "it  would  not  be  astonishing  if  we  should  be  here 
mistaken  to  the  extent  of  one  or  two  centuries,  inasmuch  as  the 
historical  documents  are  vitiated,  and  the  hieroglyphical  monuments 
incomplete." 

"Thus  we  have  reached,"  continues  de  Rouge,  "the  time  of  the 
expulsion  of  the  Shepherds,  beyond  whom  no  certain  calculation  is 
as  yet  possible  from  the  monuments  known.  The  texts  do  not  agree 
how  long  these  terrible  guests  occupied  and  ravaged  Egypt,  and  the 
monuments  are  silent  about  them.  However,  their  domination 
lasted  for  a  long  time,  since  several  dynasties  succeeded  one  another 
before  the  deliverance,  and  that  is  all  we  know  about  it.  ISTor  are 
we  better  informed  concerning  the  duration  of  the  first  empire,  and 
we  have  no  certain  means  for  measuring  the  age  of  those  pyramids 
which  bear  evidence  of  the  grandeur  of  the  first  Egypt.  Neverthe- 
less, if  we  remember  that  the  generations  which  built  them  are 
separated  from  our  era,  first  by  the  eighteen  centuries  of  the  second 
empire,  then  by  the  very  long  period  of  the  Asiatic  invasion,  and 
lastly  by  several  dynasties  of  numerous  powerful  kings,  the  age  of 
the  pyramids  will  not  lose  anything  of  its  majesty  in  the  eyes  of  the 
historian,  although  he  be  unable  to  fix  it  with  exact  precision." 

It  is  to  such  an  early  period  of  the  history  of  mankind  that  some 
of  the  statues  and  reliefs  of  Egypt  can  now  be  traced  back  with  cer- 
tainty; and  even  they  do  not  present  us  with  the  rudiments  of  an 
infantine  art,  but  are  actually  specimens  of  the  highest  artistic  char- 
acter. Like  Minerva  springing  forth  from  the  head  of  Jupiter,  a 
full-grown  armed  virgin,  Art  in  Egypt  appears,  in  the  very  earliest 
monuments,  fully  developed, — archaic  in  some  respects,  but  not  at 
all  barbarous. 

Through  the  kindness  of  MM.  de  Rouge",  Mariette,  Deveria,  and 
Salzmann,  and  of  Chev.  Lepsius  at  Berlin,  and  their  regard  for  Mr. 
Gliddon,  we  are  enabled  to  publish  a  series  of  royal  and  princely 
effigies  of  the  first  or  Old  Empire,  carefully  copied,  often  photographi- 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY.  103 

cally,  from  these  original  statues  and  reliefs  at  the  Louvre  and  other 
Museums.  They  are  the  earliest  monuments  of  human  art  known 
to  us ;  being  portraits  of  the  Egyptian  aristocracy  at  a  time  preceding- 
Abraham  by  many  centuries.  They  enable  us  to  form  a  correct  idea 
of  Egyptian  art  in  its  first  phasis,  before  it  became  fettered  by  a 
traditionary  hieratic  type.  In  an  ethnological  respect,  they  give  us 
the  true  features  of  the  original  Egyptians :  and  it  is  very  remarkable 
that  many  statues  and  reliefs,  later  by  more  than  two  thousand 
years,  bear  exactly  the  same  character;  that,  again,  two  thousand 
years  subsequently  have  not  changed  the  national  type, — the  Fellah 
(peasant)  of  the  present  day  resembling  his  ancestors  of  fifty  cen- 
turies ago,  viz :  the  builders  of  the  pyramids,  so  closely,  that  his 
Nilotic  pedigree  never  can  be  seriously  questioned  henceforward. 

The  character  of  the  Egyptian  race  is  most  distinctly  expressed 
upon  its  monuments  throughout  all  the  phases  of  its  history ;  and 
these  sculptures  of  the  IVth  dynasty  differ  from  those  of  later  ages 
merely  in  details,  not  in  spirit.  Ernest  Kenan,  the  great  Shemitic 
philologue,  describes  that  character  in  the  following  words: 

"The  earliest  [Cushite  and  Hamitic]  civilizations  stamped  with  a 
character  peculiarly  materialistic ;  the  religious  and  poetical  instincts 
little  developed;  the  artistical  feeling  rather  weak;  but  the  senti- 
ment of  elegance  very  refined ;  a  great  aptitude  for  handicraft,  and 
for  mathematical  and  astronomical  sciences;  literature  practically 
exact,  but  without  idealism;  the  mind  positive,  bent  on  business, 
welfare,  and  the  pleasures ;  neither  public  spirit  nor  political  life ; 
on  the  contrary,  a  most  elaborate  civil  administration,  such  as  Euro- 
pean nations  never  beeame  acquainted  with,  until  the  Roman  epoch, 
and  in  our  modern  times."  *' 

The  Egyptians  were  eminently  a  practical  people,  of  so  little 
imagination,  that  in  religion  they  conceived  no  heroic  mythology. 
Whilst  their  gods  were  personified  abstractions,  all  of  them,  with 
the  only  exception  of  the  Osirian  group,  stand  without  life  or  history. 
In  literature  the  Egyptians  never  rose  above  dry  historical  annals, 
religious  hymns,  proverbial  precepts,  poetical  panegyrics,  and  liturgi- 
cal compositions.     Epic  and  dramatic  poetry  was  feeble,48  romance 

47  Histoire  et  Systeme  compare  des  Langues  Semiliques,  Paris,  1855;  Ie.  partie,  p.  474. 

^  The  publication  of  M.  de  Rough's  critical  translation  of  the  Sallier  Papyrus,  containing 
the  poetic  recital  of  the  Wars  of  Ramses,  14th  century,  B.  C,  against  the  Asiatic  Sheta,  or 
Kheia  (recently  read  to  the  Imperial  Institute),  will  prove  that  the  metrical  style  of  these 
Egyptian  canticles  frequently  resembles  Hebrew  psalmody.  Meanwhile,  see  some  brief 
specimens  of  hieroglyphical  poetry  in  Birch,  Crystal  Palace  Catalogue,  Egypt,  1856 ;  pp. 
266-8. 

3 


104  GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 

simple,49  philosophical  speculation  tame,50  whilst  critical  history  seems 
to  have  been  unknown  to  them.  Induction  teaches  us  that  the  art 
of  such  a  race  must  be  analogous ;  truthful,  but  narrow ;  practical, 
but  of  no  high  pretensions;  and  indeed  we  find,  upon  close  observa- 
tion, that  it  displays  very  little  variety  in  its  forms ;  but  within  its 
narrow  range  it  is  distinguished,  however,  by  the  utmost  fidelity  and 
truthfulness.  Ideal  heroic  types  are  entirely  foreign  to  Egyptian  art; 
we  find  scarcely  any  scenes  purely  mythological,  in  the  abstract  sense 
of  the  term  (that  is,  as  admired  in  Hellenic  and  Etruscan  art),  among 
their  numerous  reliefs  or  paintings ;  the  representations  of  godhead 
and  subordinate  divinities  being  always  brought  into  connexion  with 
sacrifices  and  oblations,  which  almost  seem  to  have  been  the  only 
object  of  the  nation's  religion.  The  king,  his  pomp,  processions, 
and  battles,  and  the  individual  life,  daily  occupations,  sports  and 
pastimes  of  the  Egyptians,  remain  the  favourite  subjects  of  the 
artists  who,  for  more  than  two  thousand  years  of  routine,  constantly 
returned  to  that  source,  without  ever  exhausting  it,  always  marking 
their  composition  with  the  stamp  of  truth,  and  preserving  the  great- 
est regard  for  individuality.  Accordingly,  the  statues,  whenever 
they  represent  men,  and  not  gods,  are  portraits  intended  to  give 
the  real,  and  not  the  embellished  and  idealized  features  of  the  men 
represented.  But,  whilst  we  meet  with  the  greatest  variety  in 
respect  to  the  faces,  the  posture  of- the  statues  remains  altogether 
stereotyped  during  all  the  times  of  Egyptian  history. 

Statuary  had,  in  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  very  few  forms  of  expres- 
sion ;  about  six  or  seven,  which  were  repeated  over  and  over  again, 
all  of  them  of  the  most  rigid  symmetry,  without  any  movement.  No 
passion  ever  enlivened  the  earnest  features,  no  emotion  of  the  soul 
disturbed  the  decent  composure  and  archaic  dignity  imparted  by  the 
Egyptian  sculptor.  "No  warrior  was  sculptured  in  the  various  atti- 
tudes of  attack  and  defence;  no  wrestler,  no  discobolus,  no  pugilist 
exhibited  the  grace,  the  vigour,  the  muscular  action  of  a  man ;  nor 

49  As  a  sample,  see  De  Rough's  French  rendering  of  a  hieratic  payprus  which  presents 
sundry  curious  analogies  with  the  story  of  Joseph,  —  Revue  Archeologique,  1852;  vol.  ix., 
pp.  385-97. 

60  To  judge,  that  is,  by  the  "Book  of  the  Dead,"  (Lepsittb,  Todtenbuch  der  JEgypter  nach 
dem  Hieroglyphischen  Papyrus  in  Turin,  Leipzig,  4to,  1842)  or  as  Bkugsch  (Sai'-an-Sinsin,  sive 
Liber  Metempsychosis  veterum  JEgypliorum,  Berlin,  4to,  1851,  p.  42)  restores  Champollion's 
name  for  it,  the  "Funereal  Ritual," — wherein,  amid  the  recondite  puerilities  of  a  celestial 
lodge,  with  its  ordeals,  quaint  pass-words,  and  ministering  demons,  it  is  evident  that  an 
Egyptian's  idea  of  a  "Future  State"  in  Heaven  never  soared  above  aspirations  for  a  repe- 
tition of  his  terrestrial  life  in  Egypt  itself!  Be  it  noted  here  that  M.  de  Rouge1  has  found 
the  chapter  "  On  life  after  death"  on  a  monument  of  the  XHth  dynasty ;  thereby  establish- 
ing the  existence  of  large  portions  of  this  Ritual  in  ante-Abrahamic  days. 


GENERAL  REMARKS  OK  ICONOGRAPHY.    105 

were  the  beauties,  the  feeling,  and  the  elegance  of  female  forms  dis- 
played in  stone :  all  was  made  to  conform  to  the  same  invariable 
model,  which  confined  the  human  figure  to  a  few  conventional 
postures."51 

Of  groups  they  knew  only  two,  both  of  them  most  characteristic. 
Sometimes  it  is  the  husband  with  the  wife,  seated  on  the  same  chair 
on  terms  of  perfect  equality,  holding  one  another's  hand,  or  putting 
their  arms  round  one  another's  waist,  in  sign  of  matrimonial  happi- 
ness, evidently  founded  upon  monogamy  and  perfect  social  equality 
between  the  sexes.52  Sometimes  again  it  is  the  husband,  in  his 
character  of  the  head  of  the  family,  quietly  sitting  on  a  chair,  accom- 
panied by  the  standing  figures  of  his  wife  and  children,  sculptured 
as  accessories,  and  considerably  smaller  in  size  than  the  husband 
and  father. 

As  to  the  single  statues,  they  are  either  standing  erect,  the  arms 
hanging  down  to  the  thighs  in  a  straight  line  (though  occasionally 
the  right  hand  holding  a  sceptre,  whip,  or  other  tool,  is  raised  to  the 
chest),  the  left  foot  always  stepping  forward ;  or  the  figure  is  seated, 
with  the  hands  resting  on  the  knees,  or  held  across  the  breast. 
Another  attitude  is  that  of  a  person  kneeling  on  the  ground,  and 
holding  the  shrine  of  some  deity  before  him.  The  representation  of 
a  man  squatting  on  the  ground  and  resting  his  arms  upon  his  knees, 
which  are  drawn  up  to  his  chin,  is  the  most  clumsy  of  the  Egyptian 
forms,  if  the  most  natural  posture  to  the  race,  being  perpetuated  to 
this  day  by  the  Fellaheen  when  resting  themselves ;  whilst  the  statues 
in  a  crouching  position  are  the  most  graceful  for  their  natural  naivete. 
If  we  add  to  these  few  varieties  of  positions  the  stone  coffins,  imita- 
ting the  mummy  lying  on  its  back,  and  swaddled  in  its  clothes,  we 
have  exhausted  all  the  forms  of  Egyptian  statuary.  Specimens  of 
these  six  attitudes,  all  of  them  equally  rigid  and  symmetrical,  being 
found  among  the  earliest  monuments  of  the  empire  from  the  IVth 
to  the  XLTIth  dynasty,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  Egyptian  statuary 
added  no  new  form  to  their  primitive  sculptural  types  during  the 
long  lapse  of  nearly  thirty  centuries,  which  wrought  certainly  some 
variety  into  the  details,  but  not  upon  the  forms.     In  fact,  the  statue 

W  Sir  J.  Gardner  Wilkinson,  Popular  account  of  the  ancient  Egyptians,  II.  272.  There 
are  some  partial  exceptions  to  the  rigor  of  this  rule,  such  as  the  "Wrestlers  at  Benihassan," 
the  "Musicians  at  Tel-el-amarna,"  "Ramesses  playing  chess  at  Medeenct-Haboo,"  the 
same  monarch  "spearing  the  Scythian  chief"  at  Aboosimbel,  an  occasional  group  in  grand 
battle-tableaux,  various  scenes  of  negro  captives,  &c. ;  but  they  appear  to  be  accidental, 
or  perhaps  instinctive,  efforts  of  individual  artists  to  escape  from  the  conventional  trammels 
prescribed  by  theocratic  art.  In  the  folio  plates  of  Rosellini,  Champollion,  Cailleaud,  Prisse, 
and  Lepsius — especially  the  last  two  authorities  —  such  instances  may  be  found. 

52  Idem,  II.  224. 


106         GENERAL    EEMAEKS    ON    ICONOGEAPHT. 

was  in  Egypt  never  emancipated  from  architecture.53  It  was  sculp- 
tured for  a  certain  and  determinate  place,  always  in  connection  with 
a  temple,  palace,  or  sepulchre,  of  which  it  became  a  subservient 
ornamental  portion,  an  architectural  member  as  it  were,  like  the  pair 
of  obelisks  placed  ever  in  front  of  the  propyleia,  or  the  columns  sup- 
porting a  pronaos.  This  poverty  of  forms,  and  their  constantly 
recurring  monotony,  make  the  inspection  of  large  Egyptian  collec- 
tions as  tiresome  to  the  great  bulk  of  visitors,  as  the  review  of  a 
Russian  regiment  is  to  the  civilian ;  one  figure  resembles  the  other, 
and  only  the  closer  investigation  of  an  experienced  eye  descries  a 
difference  of  style  and  individuality. 

The  bas-reliefs  were  not,  for  the  Egyptians,  so  much  independent 
works  of  art,  as  architectural  ornaments,  and  means  for  conveying 
knowledge,  answering  often  the  purpose  of  a  kind  of  vignettes  or 
illustrations  of  hieroglyphical  inscriptions.  They  record  always  some 
defined,  historical,  religious,  or  domestic  scene,  without  pretension 
to  any  allegorical  double-meaning,  or  esoteric  symbolism.  Beauty 
remained  with  their  hierogrammatic  artists  less  important  than  dis- 
tinctness, the  correctness  of  drawing  being  sacrificed  to  convention- 
alisms of  hieratic  style ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  general  truthful- 
ness of  the  representation  was  peculiarly  aimed  at.  The  unnatural 
mannerism  of  the  Egyptian  bas-relief  manifests  itself  principally  in 
the  too  high  position  of  the  ear,54  and  in  representing  the  eye  and 
chest  as  in  front  view,  whilst  the  head  and  lower  part  of  the  body  are 
drawn  in  profile.65  Nevertheless,  this  constant  mannerism  and  many 
occasional  incorrectnesses  are  blended  with  the  most  minute  appre- 
ciation of  individual  and  national  character.  It  is  impossible  not  at 
once  to  recognize  the  portraits  of  the  kings  upon  their  different 
monuments ;  and  we  alight  on  reliefs  where  some  of  the  figures  are 
so  carelessly  drawn  as  to  present  two  right  or  two  left  hands  to  the 
spectator,  yet  combined  with  such  characteristic  effigies  of  negroes,,  of 
Shemites,  of  Assyrians,  of  Nubians,  &c,  that  they  remain  superior  to 
the  representations  of  human  races  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans. 
This  general  truthfulness  applies  to  Egyptian  art  from  the  very  first 
dawn  of  history,  throughout  all  the  subsequent  periods,  down  to  the 
time  of  the  Roman  conquest.  But  whilst  the  principal  features  of 
art  remained  stationary,  the  eye  of  the  art-student  finds  many 
cbanges  in  details,  and  these  constitute  the  history  of  Egyptian  art. 

53  Cf.  Wilkinson,  Architecture  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  London,  1853. 

64  Mobton,  Cran.  JEgypt.,  Philad.,  1844,  pp.  26-7;  and  "inedited  MSS."  in  Types  of  Man- 
kind, p.  318: — Pruner,  Die  UeberbkibselderAltayyptishchenMenschenrage,Mimchen,lS4:(i,ii.6. 

55  For  a  ludicrous  example,  see  the  "  37  Prisoners  at  Benihassan,"  in  Rosellini,  M.  R. 
XXVI — VIII ;  of  the  remote  age  of  the  Xllth  dynasty. 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


107 


The  proportions  of  the  statues  in  the  time  of  the  Old  Empire  [say 
from  the  35th  century  b.  c,  down  to  the  20th,56]  are  short  and  heavy; 
the  figures  look,  therefore,  somewhat  awkward;  hut,  on  the  whole, 
they  are  conceived  with  considerable  feeling  of  truth,  and  executed 
with  the  endeavour  to  obtain  anatomical  correctness.  The  principal 
forms  of  the  body,  and  even  its  details,  the  skull,  the  muscles  of  the 
chest  and  of  the  knees,  are  nearly  always  correctly  sculptured  in  close 
but  not  servile  imitation  of  nature.  The  shape  of  the  eye  is  not  yet 
disfigured  by  a  conventional  frame,  nor  is  the  ear  put  too  high ;  but 
the  fingers  and  toes  evidently  offered  the  greatest  difficulties  to  the 
primeval  Egyptian  artists.  They  commonly  failed  to  form  them 
correctly ;  the  simplicity  and  exactitude  displayed  in  sculpturing  the 
face  and  body  scarcely  ever  extended  to  the  hands  and  feet,  which 
are  blunt  and  awkward. 

The  earliest  of  all  the  statues  now  extant  in  the  world,  as  far  as 
we  know,  is  the  efhgy  of  Kam-ten,  or  Homten,  a  "royal  kinsman" 
of  the  md  dynasty,  found  in  his  tomb  at  Abooseer,  and  now  in  the 
Berlin  Museum.  The  following  wood-cut  [7]  is  a  faithful  reduction  of 
this  statue's  head,  characterized  by  a 
good-natured  expression,  without  any 
mannerism  or  conventional  type  about 
the  features ;  the  eye  is  correctly,  and 
the  mouth  naturally  drawn ;  not  yet 
twisted  into  the  stereotyped  unmean- 
ing smile  of  the  later  periods. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  the 
head  of  this  statue  with  the  low-relief 
portrait  [8]  of  the  same  prince  from  the 
same  tomb,  in  order  to  perceive  the 
difference  between  the  artistic  con- 
ception of  a  statue  and  of  a  relief 
in  Egypt.     The  relief  portrait  is  evi-  Kam-ten,  Statue 


Fig.  7. 


66  As  previously  stated,  in  the  present  impossibility  of  attaining,  for  times  anterior  to  the 
XVIIth  dynasty,  any  precise  chronology,  we  shall  make  use  herein  of  the  vague  term  cen- 
turies, when  treating  on  events  anterior  to  the  age  of  Solomon,  taken  at  B.  C.  1000.  The 
numerical  system  of  Chev.  Lepsius  furnishes  the  scale  preferred  by  us,  which  is  defined  in 
Types  of  Mankind,  p.  689.  His  arrangement  of  Egyptian  dynasties  may  be  consulted  in 
Briefe  aus  JEgyplen,  JEthioplen  unci  der  Halbinsel  des  Sinai,  Berlin,  1852,  pp.  364-9;  of 
which  the  elegant  English  translation  by  the  Misses  Horner  (Bohn's  Library,  1853)  contains 
the  later  emendations  of  this  learned  Egyptologist. 

6*  Communicated  in  lithograph  by  Chev.  Lepsius  to  Mr.  Gliddon ;  together  with  our  sub- 
sequent Nos.,  8,  9,  10,  and  other  heads  that  space  precludes  us  from  inserting;  but  for  the 
important  use  of  all  which,  in  these  iconographic  and  ethnological  studies,  we  beg  to  tender 
to  the  Chevalier  our  joint  acknowledgments. 


108 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


Kam-teu,  Belief. 
Fig.  9. 


dently  more  conventional.     It  is  not  a  free  artistical  imitation  of 
Fig.  8.  nature,  the  hand  of  the  sculptor  heing 

fettered  by  traditionary  rules.  This 
conventionalism  of  the  reliefs  not 
being  applicable  to  statues,  is  an  evi- 
dence that  sculpture  in  Egypt  began 
with  the  relief,  which  again  grew  out 
of  the  simple  outline.  The  principal 
difference  between  the  two  portraits 
is,  that  the  eye  is  not  fore-shortened 
in  the  relief,  whilst  the  lips  are 
too  long;  still,  the  peculiar  raising 
of  the  angles  of  the  mouth  is  not 
conventional  in  the  first  period  of 
Egyptian  art. 

The  red  granite  statue  of  prince 
Bet-mes,  [9]  in  the  British  Museum, 
(No.  60,  A,)  an  officer  of  State, 
"king's  relation,"  of  the  same 
period,  displays  a  similar  artistical 
character;  clumsy  proportions,  but 
a  close  observation  of  nature, 
without  any  tendency  to  embellish 
or  to  idealize.  It  is,  what  it  was 
intended  to  be,  a  faithful  portrait. 
The  homely  relief-head  [10]  of  an- 
other "royal  relative,"  Ey-meei,  of 
the  IVth  dynasty,  from  the  Berlin 
Museum,  possesses  such  a  striking 
individuality  of  character  that,  in 
spite  of  the  conventional  repre- 
sentation of  the  eye,  we  cannot 
doubt  for  a  moment  its  resem- 
blance to  this  royal  kinsman 
of  king  Cheops  -  Suphis,  whose 
tomb  is  the  great  pyramid  of 
Geezeh. 

We  now  have  the  pleasure  of 
submitting    to    the   reader,   in   a 
series  of  lithographic  plates,  por- 
traits as  yet  unique  in  the  history 
Et-meei,  Relief.  of  Art,  which  for  antiquity,  inte- 

rest, beauty,  and  rareness,  surpass  everything  hitherto  known. 


Bet-mes,  Statue. 
Fig.  10. 


pin. 


m 


M.Solzmannpiioto6.'P.aris 


Ancient    Scribe'  (Ante,.  PI  I.')  -Profile 


-  JSJraK 


Same  head, altered  into  a  modern  Fellah. 


Giidikn.resterarFlilai 


F  SDTival  &.  Co. lila press  PhiT 


GENERAL    REMARKS    0  N"    ICONOGRAPHY.         109 

Particulars  concerning  the  unrivalled  and  still-inedited  discoveries, 
during  the  years  1851-54  at  Memphis,  of  M.  Auguste  Mariette, 
now  one  of  the  Conservateurs  of  the  Louvre  Museum,  are  supplied 
by  our  collaborator  Mr.  Gliddon  [Chapter  V.  infra].  With  that 
frank  liberality  which  is  so  honorable  to  scientific  men,  MM.  de 
Rouge,  Mariette,  and  Deveria,  not  merely  permitted  Mrs.  Gliddon 
to  copy  whatever,  in  that  gorgeous  Museum,  might  become  available 
to  the  present  work ;  but  the  last-named  Egyptologist  kindly  pre- 
sented her  husband  with  the  photographic  originals  (taken  by  M. 
Deveria  himself  from  these  scarcely-unpacked  statues, — May,  1855,) 
from  which  our  copies  have  been  transferred  directly  to  the  stone, 
without  alteration  in  any  perceptible  respect.  In  these  complaisant 
facilities,  the  very  distinguished  photographer  of  Jerusalem,  M.  Aug. 
Salzmann,  also  volunteered  his  skilful  aid ;  and  we  reproduce  [see 
PI.  LL]  the  facsimile  profile  of  the  "  Scribe,"  due  to  his  accurate 
instrument.  Not  to  be  outdone  in  generosity  towards  their  trans- 
atlantic colleague,  Chev.  Lepsius,  who  had  just  been  surveying  these 
"  nouveautes  archeologiques"  at  the  Louvre,  subsequently  forwarded 
from  Berlin,  to  Mr.  Gliddon  in  London,  a  complete  series  of  archaic 
Egyptian  portraits,  drawn  on  stone  also  from  photographs,  which 
included  likewise  copies  of  those  already  obtained  from  M.  Mari- 
ette's  Memphite  collection.  Such  are  some  of  those  unrequitable 
favors  through  which  we  are  enabled  to  be  the  first  in  laying  docu- 
ments so  precious  before  fellow-students  of  ethnology.  Their  power- 
ful bearing  upon  the  question  of  permanence  of  type  in  Egypt  during 
5000  years, — upon  that  of  the  effects  of  amalgamation  among  dis- 
tinct types,  in  elucidation  of  the  physiological  law  that  the  autoch- 
thonous majority  invariably,  in  time,  absorbs  and  effaces  the  foreign 
minority  ;  and  as  supplying  long-deficient  criteria  whereby  to  analyze 
and  compare  the  ethnic  elements  of  less  historical  nations  than  the 
Egyptians,  —  these  interesting  points  fall  especially  within  the  pro- 
vince of  Dr.  ZSTott ;  and  he  has  discussed  them  in  his  Prefatory  Re- 
marks to  this  volume. 

With  these  brief  indications,  we  proceed  to  test  our  theory  of  the 
principles  that  characterize  the  Art  of  different  nationalities ;  calling 
to  mind,  with  regard  to  these  most  antique  specimens  of  all  statuary, 
that,  until  their  arrival  at  Paris  in  the  autumn  of  1854,  it  had 
scarcely  been  suspected  that  the  primordial  Egyptians  attained  the 
art  of  making  statues  "  ronde-bosse"  much  before  the  XLTth  dynasty 
[about  2200  b.  c.].  The  authors  of  "  Types  of  Mankind,"  in  their 
wide  investigation  of  monographic  data,  were  unable  to  produce  any 
Nilotic  sculpture  more  ancient  than  bas-reliefs.58     Exceptional  doubts, 

58  Op.  oil.,  pp.  241-3,  PI.  I.— IV. 


110  GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 

to  this  current  opinion  on  the  relative  modernness  of  Egyptian 
statuary,  were  then  entertained  chiefly  by  Mr.  Birch — who  had 
already  classified,  as  appertaining  to  the  Old  Empire,  various  archaic 
fragments  in  the  British  Museum, — by  Chev.  Lepsius,  when  publish- 
ing a  few  mutilated  statues  among  the  early  dynasties  of  the  Denk- 
maler, — and  by  the  Vicomte  de  Rouge,  who  wrote  in  1852  ;59  "  Trois 
statues  de  la  galerie  du  Louvre  (nos.  36,  37,  38)  presentent  un  excel- 
lent specimen  de  la  sculpture  de  ces  premiers  ages.  Dans  ces  mor- 
ceaux,  uniques  jusqu'iei  et  par  consequent  inestimables,  le  type  des 
hommes  a  quelque  chose  de  plus  trapu  et  de  plus  rude ;  la  pose  est 
d'une  grande  simplicity;  quelques  parties  rendent  la  nature  avec 
verite ;  mais  Ton  sent  deja  qu'une  loi  hieratique  a  regie  les  attitudes 
et  va  ravir  aux  artistes  une  partie  precieuse  de  leur  liberte." 

It  must,  therefore,  be  gratifying  to  the  authors  of  the  precursory 
volume  to  the  present,  to  find  their  doctrine,  "that  the  primitive 
Egyptians  were  nothing  more  nor  less  than  —  EGYPTIANS,"80  so 
incontestably  confirmed  by  a  group  of  statues  which  did  not  reach 
Paris  for  six  months  after  the  publication  of  their  researches ;  and 
we  may  now  rejoice  with  those  archaeologists,  whose  acumen  had 
already  foreshadowed  the  discovery  of  beautiful  statuary  belonging 
to  the  early  days  of  the  pyramids,  that,  henceforward,  the  series  of 
Egyptian  art  continues,  in  an  unbroken  chain,  from  the  35th  century 
B.  C.  down  to  long  after  the  Christian  era. 

Prince  Sepa  [Plate  HI.,  fig.  1],  and  his  wife  ISTas,  or  ISTesa,  [fig.  2], 
are  the  first  we  shall  examine  among  these  statues  of  the  Louvre ; 
from  Lepsius's  copy.  They  are  likewise  somewhat  clumsy  as  regards 
the  general  proportions ;  but  parts  of  the  body,  for  instance  the 
knees,  are  sculptured  with  an  anatomical  correctness  superior  to 
that  of  the  monuments  of  the  great  Ramses.  The  statue  of  Shbmka 
[Plate  IV.]  "superintendent  of  the  royal  domains"  (IVth  or  Vlth 
dynasty),  seated  between  the  small-sized  standing  figures  of  princess 
Ata,  his  wife,  and  their  son  Knem,  is  an  excellent  illustration  of 
incipient  elongation  together  with  greater  elegance  of  the  artistical 
canon.  In  spite  of  the  awkward  composition,  it  attracts  our  atten- 
tion powerfully,  since  the  face  teems  with  life  and  individuality; 
whilst  the  forms  are  correct  in  the  main,  but  lamentably  stumpy 
and  clumsy  about  the  bauds  and  feet.     [See  Plate  V,  fig.  2.] 

The  head  of  a  Priest,  Pher-nefer,  or  Pahoo-er-nefer  [Plate  V., 
fig.  1  ],  "  Superintendent  of  the  timber-cutters  and  of  agriculture," 
found  together  with  Shemka  in  the  same  sepulchre,  is  uncommonly 

69  Notice  dee  Monuments  exposes  dans  la  galerie  d'antiquitSs  eigypliennes  (Salle  du  rez-de-chaus- 
sSe),  au  MusSe  du  Louvre,  Paris,  1852,  pp.  7-8. 
«>  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  245. 


.-~  :-        I 


PI.  III. 


.,# 


Sepa. 


'■.■:'■  .'■■."■-;... 


I 


ill 


: 


■•■ 


;:-& 
^ 


II   ■   '    ■ 
I 

4  I      '+  v*" 


"\ 


!  I  iff ff  '   '  ' 


,M. 


Nesa. 

'Louvre  Museum. 


PL  IV. 


. 


Knem.  Skhem-ka.  Ata 

(Luuvre  Museum.) 


GENERAL    REMARKS    OK    ICONOGRAPHY.  Ill 

well  moulded;  but  the  crouching  statuette  of  a  "Scribe," — cele- 
brated at  the  Louvre  as  "le  petit  bonhomme"  —  is  the  crowning 
masterpiece  of  primitive  art  revealed  through  Mariette's  exhuma- 
tions. It  is  from  this  venerable  tomb  of  the  Vth  dynasty,  5000 
years  old,  which  the  later  constructors,  (above  2000  years  ago,)  of  the 
ancient  Avenue  of  Sphinxes  leading  to  the  Memphite  Serapeum  had 
cut  through  and  walled-up  again.  The  material  is  white  limestone, 
colored  red ;  which  even  to  its  trifling  abrasions  is  reproduced  as  a 
most  appropriate  frontispiece  to  this  work  [Plate  I.].  The  profile 
view  [Plate  II.,  fig.  1]  exhibits  the  excellence  of  its  workmanship, 
no  less  than  the  purest  type  of  an  ancient  Egyptian.  Beneath  it 
[fig.  2],  Mr.  Gliddon  has  repeated  the  same  head,  with  the  sole 
addition  of  the  moustache  and  short  beard,  and  the  mutation  of  the 
head-dress  into  the  quilted-cotton  skull-cap  of  the  modern  peasantry ; 
and  thus  we  behold  the  perfect  preservation  of  a  typical  form  of  man 
through  5000  years  of  time,  in  the  familiar  effigy  of  a  living  Fellah  ! 

"We  are  not  reduced  to  mere  conjectures,"  comments  the  Conservator  of  the  Imperial 
Louvre  Museum,  "concerning  the  figure  of  the  crouching  Scribe,  placed  in  the  middle  of 
the  hall  (Salle  civile.)61  It  was  found  in  the  tomb  of  Skhem-ka  with  the  figures  collected 
together  in  the  hall  of  the  most  ancient  monuments  (Salle  des  Monuments.)  It  appertains, 
therefore,  to  the  Vth  or  the  Vlth  dynasty.  The  figure,  so  to  say,  is  speaking :  this  look 
which  amazes  was  obtained  by  a  very  ingenious  combination.  In  a  piece  of  opaque  white 
quartz  is  encrusted  a  pupil  of  very  transparent  rock-crystal,  in  the  centre  of  which  is 
planted  a  little  metallic  ball.  The  whole  eye  is  fixed  in  a  bronze  leaf  which  answers  for 
both  eyelids.  The  sand  had  very  happily  preserved  the  color  of  all  the  figures  in  this  tomb. 
The  movement  of  the  knees  and  the  slope  of  the  loins  are  above  all  remarkable  for  their 
correctness .  all  the  traits  of  the  face  are  strongly  stamped  with  individuality ;  it  is  evident 
that  this  statuette  was  a  portrait." 

These,  with  the  beautiful  head  of  another  Egyptian,  long  m  the 
Louvre,  but  unclassed  until  1854,  [Plate  VI.]  ^  of  perhaps  the  same 
period,  exceed  in  artistic  interest  all  the  monuments  of  the  Nile-val- 
ley ;  and  the  speaking  expression  of  their  countenances  invariably 
catches  the  eye  of  every  visitor  of  the  Egyptian  Gallery  at  Paris. 
Not  that  they  approach  ideal  sculptured  beauty,  such  as  we  are 
accustomed  to  meet  with  in  Greek  statuary ;  on  the  contrary,  there 
is  not  a  spark  of  ideality  in  either  of  the  two  representations ;  their 

61  De  Rouge,  Notice  Sommaire  des  Monumens  egypliens  exposes  dans  les  galeries  du  Mush  du 
Louvre,  Paris,  18mo.,  1855,  p.  66.  One  further  observation,  instead  of  being  any  way  em- 
bellished in  our  Plate  I.,  our  copy,  obtained  through  the  heliotype,  is  defective  in  the  legs; 
which,  projecting  in  advance  of  the  upper  part  of  the  body,  are  heavier  and  less  propor- 
tionate than  in  the  stone  original ;  but  possessing  no  measurements  for  their  reduction,  we 
have  not  felt  at  liberty  to  deviate  from  M.  Deveria's  photograph. 

62  The  following  is  M.  Deveria's  note  on  this  gem  of  antique  art: — "Buste  provenant 
d'une  statue  de  l'ancien  art  memphite,  contemporaine  des  pyramides.  Pierre  calcaire,  pein- 
ture  rouge,  grandeur  naturelle."     Paris,  Louvre  Museum,  30th  May,  1855. 


112  GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 

type  is  neither  grand  nor  handsome ;  but  they  are  truthful  and  most 
lively  portraits  of  Egyptians,  stamped  with  such  a  striking  individu- 
ality, as  to  leave  the  impression  that  they  must  have  resembled  their 
originals,  notwithstanding  that  the  imitation  of  nature  is  with  them 
not  at  all  painfully  scrupulous,  and  rather  evinces  considerable 
artistical  tact  in  the  execution.  The  correctness  of  the  position  of 
the  ear  in  these  early  Egyptian  monuments  is  peculiarly  interesting, 
since  it  confirms  the  observation  of  Dr.  Morton,  before  alluded  to, 
that  its  misplacement  on  the  later  and  more  ordinary  monuments  is 
not  founded  upon  strict  imitation  of  nature,  but  that  it  belongs  alto- 
gether to  conventional  hieratic  mannerism. 

The  relief  portrait  of  king  Men-ka-her,  of  the  Vth  dynasty  [Plate 
~VTL) — [say,  about  30  centuries  b.  c]  certainly  deserves  a  place  of 
honor  as  the  earliest  royal  etEgy  in  existence,  not  mutilated  in  its 
features.63  It  was  found,  1851-4,  by  M.  Mariette,  on  the  lower  side 
of  a  square  calcareous  stone  employed  by  later  hands  in  a  construe 
tion  of  the  XlXth  Dynasty  [14th  century  B.  c]  in  the  Serapeium  of 
Memphis.  The  stone  belonged  originally  to  a  different  monument, 
probably  destroyed  by  the  Hyksos,  the  ruins  of  which  were  thus 
adopted  for  building  materials  by  a  posterior  and  irreverent  age, — 
just  as  Mehemet  Ali  and  his  family  have  destroyed  Pharaonic  and 
Ptolemaic  temples  for  the  construction  of  barracks  and  factories,  out 
of  stones  Id  scribed  with  the  signs  of  a  much  higher  civilization  than 
that  of  Egypt's  present  rulers.64  It  is  remarkable  that  the  ear  of 
Men-ka-her  is  placed  too  high  on  tbis  relief,  whereas  on  the  relief  of 
the  "royal  daughter"  Heta  (IVth  Dynasty),  lithographed  by  Lep- 
sius  for  the  Denkmaler,  it  is  entirely  correct. 

The  greatest  pains  have  been  taken  to  present  a  correct  facsimile 
of  this  ante-Abrahamic  Pharaoh's  beautiful  face.  The  original  was 
stamped,  drawn,  and  colored  at  the  Louvre,  by  Mrs.  Gliddon ;  and 
the  shade  of  paper  on  which  it  is  lithographed,  is  intended  to  resemble- 
that  of  the  stone,  which  has  been  divested  of  its  pristine  colors. 

Under  the  X  1 1  tb  Dynasty  [b.  c.  22  centuries]  the  expression  of 
statues  becomes  peculiarly  refined,  and  the  short  and  clumsy  propor- 
tions are  more  elongated.  "It  seems,"  says  De  Eouge,65  "that  in 
the  course  of  centuries  the  race  has  become  thinner  and  taller,  under 
the  influence  of  climate,"  —  or  perhaps  by  the  infusion  of  foreign 

63  Those  of  Shupho  and  others  at  Wadee  Magara  are  rather  effigies  than  likenesses,  and 
are  too  abraded  to  be  relied  on. 

64  Gliddon,  Appeal  to  the  antiquaries  of  Europe  on  the  destruction  of  the  monuments  of  Egypt, 
London,  1841: — Prisse  d'Avennes,  Collections  d'Antiquites  egyptiennes  au  Kaire,  ReTue  Ar- 
ch^ologiqne,  16  Mars,  1846. 

65  Notice  Som.,  p.  24: — Id.,  Rapport  sur  les  Coll.  egyptiennes  en  Europe,  1851,  p   14. 


■ 


•?> 


Pahou-er-nowre. 


5 
1 


Pl.V. 


Skhem-ka.  [ Profile.) 

i  Li/iwre  Museum.) 


PI.  VI. 


.-*■-■  J 


m 


"  ^-fa..'..^. 


(Louvre  Museum. 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY.  113 

Shemitic  blood,  suggests  the  ethnologist.  I  do  not  dare  to  decide 
this  question,  but  I  simply  state  the  fact,  that  not  only  in  Egypt  but 
likewise  in  Greece,  and  later  again  at  Constantinople,  the  archaic 
representations  were  positively  shorter ;  and  that  each  successive 
canon  of  art  extended  the  legs  as  well  as  all  the  lower  parts  of  the 
body  in  relation  to  the  upper  ones.  Thus  the  Selinuntian  reliefs  are 
shorter  than  the  statues  of  ^Egina ;  which  again  are  shorter  than  the 
canon  of  Polycletes ;  whilst  the  canon  of  Lysippus  is  still  longer.66 
The  barbarous  figures  upon  the  triumphal  arch  of  Constantine  are  so 
short  that  they  resemble  dwarfs ;  at  the  same  time  that  the  human 
body  under  Justinian  and  his  successors  becomes,  on  the  reliefs,  by 
full  one-eighth  too  long. 

Contemporaneously  with  the  more  elegant  proportions  of  the  sta- 
tues of  the  "XTTth  Dynasty,  the  column  makes  its  appearance  in 
Egyptian  architecture.  In  the  hypogea  of  Beni-Hassan  we  behold 
even  the  prototype  of  the  fluted  Doric  column.67  The  bas-reliefs  of 
this  Dynasty  are  more  beautifully  and  delicately  carved  than  they 
ever  were  at  other  dates  in  Egypt ;  the  movement  of  the  figures  is  so 
truthful,  and,  in  spite  of  the  conventional  formation  of  the  eye,  chest, 
and  ear,  so  artistically  conceived,  that  we  are  led  to  expect  much 
more  from  the  progressive  development  of  Egyptian  art  than  it  really 
accomplished.  The  glorious  dawn  was  not  followed  by  the  bright 
day  it  promised.  Art  culminated  under  Sesortasen  I.  [22  cent.  b.  a], 
the  splendid  leg  of  whose  granite  statue  is  at  Berlin.  It  was  delicate 
and  refined,  but  the  feeling  of  ideal  beauty  remained  unknown  to  the 
Egyptian  race,  and  the  freedom  of  movement  in  the  reliefs  was  never 
transferred  to  the  statues,  nor  did  the  relief  become  emancipated 
from  the  thraldom  of  hieratic  conventionalism  in  the  details  of  the 
human  body.  The  development  of  art  ever  continued  to  be  imperfect 
and  unfinished  in  the  valley  of  the  Nile. 

There  are  but  very  few  statues  of  this  period  (XTTth  Dynasty) 
extant  in  the  collections  of  Europe ;  monuments  closely  preceding 
the  invasion  of  the  Hyksos,  and  therefore  more  exposed  to  their 
ravages,  belong  to  the  rarest  specimens  of  Egyptian  art.  The 
(inedited)  head  of  prince  Amenemha,  [11]  governor  of  the  west  of 
Egypt,  in  the  time  of  the  XTTth  Dynasty,  copied  from  his  dark-basalt 
statue  in  the  British  Museum,  and  the  portrait  of  king  Nefer-Hetep 
I.,  of  the  XLTIth  Dynasty  [Plate  VLTJ,  fig.  2,  from  the  Denkmaler~], 
may  give  those  interested  in  these  minute  comparisons  an  idea  of  the 
beauty  and  delicacy  of  that  period,  whilst  with  Amenemha  even  the 

66  See  principally  K.  0.  Mijller,  Handbuch  der  Archceologie,  <S  92-4,  96,  99,  and  322 ;  and 
Pliny,  Histor.  Nat.,  xxxiv.  19,  206. 

61  Lepsius,  Colonncs-piliers  en  Egypte,  Annal.  de  l'lnst.  Arche'ol.,  Rome,  1838. 

8 


114 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


Fig.  11. 


Amenemha — Statue. 


toes  are  artistically  represented.     King  Eefer-Hetep's  ear,  however, 

is  placed  too  high,  the  earliest  instance 
of  such  an  abnormity  in  an  Egyptian 
statue. 

The  invasion  of  the  nomad  Hyksos, 
between  the  XTTTth  and  XVXTth  Dynas- 
ties, whether  Arab  and  Phoenician  She- 
mites,  as  commonly  believed,  or  perhaps 
Turanians  (Scythians,  Turkomans),  as 
we  might  guess  from  the  fact  that  they 
were  a  people  of  horsemen,68  interrupted 
the  development  of  Egyptian  art  and 
civilization  for  several  centuries.  Their 
reign  is  marked  by  destruction  and  ruins, 
not  by  works  of  art  or  of  public  utility ;  still  their  irruption  benefited 
the  valley  of  the  Mle  through  their  introduction  of  the  most  impor- 
tant of  all  auxiliary  domesticated  animals,  the  horse,  unknown  to 
primeval  Arabia,  and  to  Egypt  previously  to  the  Hyksos,  but  appear- 
ing on  the  reliefs  of  the  Dynasty  which  overcame  the  invaders. 

The  XVTIth  Dynasty  of  Aahmes69  and  his  successors  snapped  the 
foreign  yoke  asunder,  and  expelled  the  nomades.  Art  revived  again. 
The  restoration  in  public  life  was  as  thorough-going  as  that  of  Erance 
under  the  Bourbons ;  the  reign  of  the  foreign  intruders  was  altogether 
ignored,  and  scarcely  mentioned  in  the  records  but  for  its  overthrow. 
In  their  canons ro  of  art,  this  New  Empire  tried  to  imitate  the  style 
of  the  XLTth  and  XTTTth  Dynasty;  but  the  spirit  which  manifests 
itself  on  the  monuments  of  the  XVDZth  Dynasty  is  different  from 
that  of  the  earlier  periods.  Instead  of  the  refined  elegance  which 
reigned  under  the  Sesortasens,  we  encounter  more  grandeur  in  the 
New  Empire, — somewhat  incorrect  and  conventional,  and  less  atten- 
tive to  nature  than  in  the  earlier  monuments,  but  always  impressive. 
During  the  victorious  period  between  Thutmosis  I.  and  Bexen-Aten, 

68  Pickering,  The  Races  of  Men,  vol.  ix.  of  the  XT.  S.  Explor.  Ezped.,  1848.  •'  On  the 
introduced  plants  and  animals  of  Egypt:" — Gliddon,  Otia  JEgypliaca,  London,  1849,  p.  50. 

69  The  Hyksos  are  beginning,  at  last,  to  emerge  from  historical  darkness.  "La  lecture 
du  papyrus  No.  1  de  la  collection  Sallier  a  reVele"  dernierement  a  M.  de  Rouge'  une  des  men- 
tions longtemps  cherch^es.  Le  papyrus  s'est  trouve"  etre  un  fragment  d'une  histoire  de  la 
guerre  entreprise  par  le  roi  de  la  The'baide  contre  le  roi  pasteur  Apapi.  Cette  guerre  se  ter- 
mina  sous  Amosis  (Aahmes),  le  monarque  suivant,  par  l'expulsion  des  strangers." 
(Alfred  Maury,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  Sept.  1855,  p.  1063). 

70 1  use  the  term  "canon,"  in  the  sense  adopted  by  Lepsius  (Auswahl,  Leipzig,  fol.  1840 
— Plate  "  Canon  der  iEgyptisehen  Proportionen  "),  and  since  so  well  classified  into  three 
epochas  of  artistic  variation  in  the  DenJcmaler; — by  Birch  (Gallery  of  Antiquities  selected 
from  the  British  Museum,  Part  II.,  PI.  33,  p.  81 ;) — and  by  Bonomi,  on  the  canon  of  Vitru- 
vius  Pollio  (The  Proportions  of  the  Human  Figure,  London,  8vo.,  1856). 


<e   sf 


. 


PI.  VII. 


;■ 


\ 


Men-  ka-her.  _  V*  Dynasty. 


( Louvre  Museum.' 


GENERAL     REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


115 


recently  identified  as  Manetho's  Achencheres,  it  nearly  rose  to  beauty, 
attaining  its  culmination  under  the  reign  of  Amenophis  the  ELI. 
Though  the  eye  is  enclosed  in  a  peculiar  conventional  frame,  while 
the  lips  invariably  smile,  the  muscles  of  the  chest,  belly,  and  arms, 
are  less  distinctly  marked,  and  the  knees  are  incorrect;  yet,  notwith- 
standing these  defects,  the  individuality  of  the  monarchs  and  princes 
whose  statues  adorn  our  Museums  is  most  expressively  rendered,  par- 
ticularly among  some  of  the  collection  at  Turin.  Colossuses  begin 
to  be  sculptured;  and  the  idea  of  grandeur  which  pervades  these 
monuments  seeks  an  expression  in  external  size. 

The  following  portraits  in  wood-cut,  reduced  from  Lepsius's  beau- 
tiful lithographs,  sufficiently  illustrate  the  style  of  the  XVIIth  Dyn. 


Fig.  12. 


Fig.  13. 


Thotmes  I. 


Thotmes  III. 


which,  in  the  Chevalier's  chronology,  comprises  the  epoch  of  Abra- 
ham.    I  regret,  however,,  that  the  engraver,  unskilled  in  Egyptian 


116         GENERAL    REMARKS    ON     ICONOGRAPHY. 

style,  lias  failed  to  reproduce  the  harmonious  delicacy  of  the  originals. 
They  can  be  consulted  in  the  Denkmaler.71 

Besides  these  four  royal  heads  none  is  more  interesting  for  the 

ethnologist  than  a  fifth  (P  late  VUI,  fig. 
Flg- 16'  1],  not  only  for  the  beautiful  carving 

of  the  expressive  features  of  the 
Queen-mother  of  that  Dynasty,  but 
peculiarly  because  it  proves  with  how 
little  foundation  Nofre-Ari  has  been 
taken  for  a  negro  princess  !  She  was 
always  recorded  with  great  veneration 
by  her  descendants,  and  often  por- 
trayed by  them  in  company  with 
king  Aahmes,  the  founder  of  the 
Dynasty  and  liberator  of  Egypt,  and 
in  many  of  those  reliefs  her  face  is 
colored  black,7'2  owing  to  some  reason 
Akhen-aten.  unknown  to  us ;  her  features,  however, 

as  well  in  reliefs  as  in  statues,  belong 
to  that  "  Caucasian"  class  termed  Shemitic.  In  the  reign  of  the 
heretic  Bexen-Aten,  Akhenaten,  the  monotheistic  worshipper  of 
the  sun's  disk — whom  some  imagine  to  be  Joseph's  Pharaoh.  —  art 
is  still  more  individual  and  characteristic, — so  much  so,  as  to  border 
on  caricature  and  ugliness ;  for  instance,  in  the  portrait  of  the  king 
himself;73  [16]  of  whom  a  most  beautiful  statuette  adorns  the  Salle 
historique  du  Louvre. 

71  Also,  from  Rosellini's  copies,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  145-51. 

72  Thus  for  instance  in  Osburn,  Monumental  history  of  Egypt,  II.,  Frontispiece — reduced 
from  IiEPSius,  Denkmaler  aus  JEgypien,  Abth.  III.,  Bl.  1. 

[Compare  her  likeness  in  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  134,  fig.  33;  and  p.  145,  fig.  45;  with 
note  123,  p.  718.  Nestor  L'Hote  has  somewhere  conjectured,  that,  when  this  sacred 
queen  is  painted  black,  she  appears  after  death  in  the  character  of  "  Isis  funfebre" — figura- 
tive of  her  nether  world  espousal  bythe  black  Osiris,  lord  of  Hades;  and  this  idea,  of  a 
"  black  Isis,"  was  perpetuated,  until  last  century,  through  our  European  middle-ages,  in  the 
many  basaltic  statues  of  that  goddess,  represented  suckling  the  new-born  Horus,  imported 
from  Egypt  at  great  cost,  which  superstition  consecrated  in  many  Continental  churches  as 
images  of  the  black  Virgin  and  her  Son.  Cf.  Maury's  Lcgendes  picuses  du  Moyen-Age, 
Paris,  1843,  p.  38,  note  2;  and  Millin.— G.  R.  G] 

73  types  of  Mankind,  p.  147,  fig.  55;  pp.  170-2;  and  notes  Nos.  151,  193-7. 

[More  recent  researches,  here  again,  are  removing  some  of  the  unaccountable  embarrass- 
ments which  the  strange  personage,  in  his  name,  epoch,  and  physiological  peculiarities,  has 
occasioned,  for  25  years  (L'Hote,  Lellres  ecrites  d'figypte  en  1838  el  1839,  Paris,  1840;  pp. 
53-78),  among  Egyptologists.  It  now  seems  certain,  1st,  (Brugsch,  Reiseberiehle,  p.  188: 
— Maury,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  Sept.,  1855,  p.  1068: — Mariette,  Bulletin  Archeologigue 
de  V  Athenceum  Francois,  June,  1855,  pp.  56—57),  that,  instead  of  Bexen-alen,  his  name 
should  be  read  Akhenaten ;  through  which  melioration  he  becomes  assimilated  to  the  two 
.Ax/mxtyii  of  Manetho's  lists;  —  and  2d,  possible,  that  his  "anomalous  features,"  as  Nott 


PI.  VIII. 


Aahmes-nofh-ari. 


■Si 


i'/ 


>* 


*"■ 


;"' 


Nefer-hetep  I. 

(  Berlin  Museum .) 


GENERAL     REMARKS    ON     ICONOGRAPHY.         117 

Under  the  long  reign  of  the  great  conqueror  Ramesses  LT.,  the 
Sesostris  of  the  Greeks,  as  well  as  under  his  successor  Menephtah, 
II.  (possibly,  as  Lepsius  considers,  the  Pharaoh  of  the  Exodus),  there 
is  a  considerable  falling  off  from  the  accomplished  forms  of  the  pre- 
ceding periods.  Egyptian  artists  now  indulge  merely  in  external 
grandeur,  whilst  expression  and  individuality  are  neglected.  The 
taste  for  colossal  statuary  of  enormous  size,  which  always  announces 
'  an  inroad  of  barbarism  into  art,  prevails  in  the  time  of  the  great 
Conqueror.  The  artist  no  longer  aims  to  create  satisfaction,  but 
only  to  excite  wonder  in  the  heart  of  a  spectator.  The  overcoming 
of  mechanical  difficulties  becomes  his  highest  goal ;  —  a  certain  sign 
that  engineer's  work  is  more  appreciated  by  the  people  than  artistic 
merit.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  deterioration  of  style,  which  thence- 
forward continues  for  many  centuries,  appears  just  under  the  reign 
of  Ramesses  II.,  who  brought  Egypt  into  close  contact  with  Asiatic 
nations  through  matrimonial  alliances74  and  by  conquest:  in  confirm- 
ation of  which  Asiatic  infiltration,  we  perceive  that,  about  his 
time,  several  words,  avowedly  Shemitic,  were  introduced  into  the 
body  of  the  Egyptian  language,75  and  Asiatic  divinities  were  im- 
ported into  the  Egyptian  pantheon;  thus  for  instance  Atesh,  or 
Analha,  the  goddess  of  love,  adored  on  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates, 
had  temples  dedicated  to  her  at  Thebes  ;76  Baal  entered  into  Ni- 
lotic theognosy;  Astarte  soon  after  had  a  Phoenician  temple  at 
Memphis ;  the  goddess  Kioun-t,  with  her  companion  Renpo,  appears 
on  steles.77  But  this  intercourse  with  foreign  nations,  and  phara- 
onic  domination  over  a  portion  of  Asia,  exercised  no  good  influence 

and  I  designated  them,  in  Types,  proceed  from  emasculation;  otherwise,  that,  at  some  period 
of  his  adult  age,  he  became  (not  voluntarily  like  Origen,  who  was  imbued  with  Matthew 
xix.  12)  an  Eunuch;  which  probable  circumstance  would  also  explain  the  condign  ven- 
geance wreaked  by  him  on  the  god  Amun  and  its  votaries,  to  whom  he  doubtless  owed  his 
treble  voice.  My  own  experiences  during  28  years  in  the  Levant  entirely  corroborate  the 
view  taken  [loc.  cit.)  by  Marietter  — 

"  Nous  avons,  de  notre  temps  m6me,  quelques  exemples  de  ces  alliances.  Dans  ce  cas, 
les  infortunes  que  la  civilisation  musulmane  admet  dans  son  sein  a.  de  si  riSvoltantes  condi- 
tions, £pousent  des  veuves,  leurs  compatriotes  ou  leurs  allie'es,  aux  enfants  desquelles  ils 
transmettent  les  b<ine'nces  des  charges  eleve'es  que,  malgre'  leur  mutilation,  il  leur  est  permis 
de  remplir.  II  est  probable  que  si  Akhenaten  gprouva  re'ellement  le  malheur  dont  ses  traits 
Eemblent  re'veMer  l'eVidence,  ce  fut  pendant  les  guerres  d'Ame'nophis  III  au  milieu  des 
peuplades  du  Sud.'  L'usage  de  mutiler  les  prisonniers  et  les  blesses  est,  parmi  ces  peu- 
plades,  aussi  ancien  que  le  monde." — G.  R.  G.] 

74  He  married  the  daughter  of  his  greatest  enemy,  the  king  of  the  Khetas,  (Hittites  ?), 
Shemitic  Asiatics. 

75  Bikch,  Crystal  Palace  Catalogue,  p.  251. 

76  De  Rodge,  Notice  sommaire,  p.  16. 

77  Lanci,  Letlre  &  M.  Prisse  a" Avenues,  Paris,  1847,  pp.  17—20,  PI.  II.:  —  and  Prisse, 
Continuation  des  Monuments  de  Champollion,  1848,  fol. 


118 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


Fig.  17. 


on  Egyptian  art.     It  is  at  this  period  that  the  misplacement  of  the 

ear  becomes  habitual  with  statues.  The 
elegant  youthful  Ramesses  of  the  Tu- 
rin Museum,  and  the  excellent  colossus 
from  the  so-called  Memnonium  at  Thebes, 
(Belzoni's),  now  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum, are  nevertheless  well  sculptured; 
reminding  us  of  the  better  school  of  de- 
sign ;  but  the  colossus  at  Metrahenny 
(Memphis),78  and  principally  the  gigantic 
statues  of  Ibsambul,79  [17]  begin  to  be 
heavy  and  incorrect,  remarkable  only  for 
their  monstrous  size.  The  gradual  decline 
is  marked  by  the  position  of  the  ear:  right 
on  the  earlier  statues,  it  is  too  high  at  Me- 
trahenny, and  resembles  horns  at  Ibsambul. 
External  grandeur,  however,  cannot  make  up  for  the  decline  of 
artistic  feeling  and  want  of  careful  finish.  If  we  examine  the  monu- 
ment of  Ramesses,  we  get  involuntarily  the  impression  that  the  artists 
of  this  period  were  always  hurried  on  by  royal  command,  without 
ever  having  sufficient  time  fully  to  complete  their  task.  A  sketchy 
roughness  is  always  visible  in  the  later  works  of  Ramesses,  blended 
with  a  conventional  mannerism.  Art  has  degenerated  into  manu- 
facture. 

The  reliefs  of  Ramesses  Eld  (XXth  dynasty),  and  the  following 
Ramessides,  together  with  the  monuments  of  Sheshonk,  and  his 
(XXIId)  dynasty,  are  still  less  significant.  They  look  dry  and  dull  in 
spite  of  a  more  minute  and  laborious,  but  spiritless  and  petty  execu- 
tion. During  the  Shemitic  (or  Assyrian)  XXIId,8'  and  succeeding 
foreign  dynasties,  down  to  that  called  ^Ethiopian  in  Manetho's  and 
other  lists,  [about  b.  c.  972  to  695]  but  evidently  not  negro,  inasmuch 
as  the  reliefs  of  Tirhaka  are  "Caucasian"  and  somewhat  Shemitic,81 
the  infusion  of  foreign  blood  and  contact  with  foreign  art  were  still 
more  detrimental  to  the  Egyptian  style.   Babylonian  representations 


Ramesses  II. 


18  Bonomi,  Transactions  of  R.  Soc,  of  Literature,  London,  1845 :  —  Lepsius,  Denkmaler, 
Abth.  III.,  bl.,  142,  e.  b. 

'9  Cf.  Lepsius,  Op.  cit.,  Abth.  III.,  bl.  190.  The  best  popular  design  of  these  four  pro- 
digious statues  is  in  Bartlett's  Nile  Boat,  1849 ;  the  one  most  resembling  Napoleon  I.  is 
that  of  Roselmni,  M.  R.,  pi.  VI.,  fig.  22 ;  reduced  in  the  above  wood-cut.  Compare 
that  in  Champollion's  folio  Monuments  de  VEgypte  de  la  Nubie. 

80  Birch,  Trans.  R.  Soc.  Lit.,  III.  part  I.  1848,  pp.  184-70;  Latard,  Nineveh  and  its  Re- 
mains, 1848;  Discoveries  in  the  ruins  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  1853;  for  ample  corrobora- 
tions:— confirmed  by  Mariette,  Op.  cit.,  pp.  89-96. 

81  Types  of  Mankind,  figs.  69,  70,  71. 


GENERAL     REMARKS   ON     ICONOGRAPHY.  119 

became  fashionable  on  articles  of  toilet  or  furniture, — for  instance  on 
combs  and  spoons, — but  indigenous  art  remained  lifeless;  tbe  Baby- 
lonian innovations  barren  and  without  lasting  results.  It  is  worthy 
of  notice,  that  about  the  time  of  the  Bubastite  (probably  Babylonian) 
XXIId  dynasty,  a  revolution  occurred  likewise  in  hieroglyphical 
writing,  a  great  number  of  ideographs  having  assigned  to  them  a 
phonetic  value.82  Mariette's  fresh  discovery  of  the  never-before  iden- 
tified cartouche  of  Bocchoris,  is  also  noteworthy  in  connection  with 
this  period  of  Egyptian  annals.83 

"With  the  Saitie  kings,  (XXYIth  dynasty,  began  675  b.  a),  a 
national  reaction  sets  in,  again  accompanied  by  a  new  development 
of  sculpture,  under  Psametik  I.  and  his  successors.  During  this 
period  of  "renaissance,"  every  effort  was  made  to  restore  the  insti- 
tutions and  ideas  of  the  long-buried  IVth  dynasty  of  Cheops.  The 
forms  remain  the  old  ones,  but  the  details  become  more  charming 
though  less  grand  than  in  the  monuments  of  the  XVTIth  dynasty. 
The  artists  rectify  the  position  of  the  ear,  although  extending  it  too 
much  in  the  upper  part;  they  abandon  the  conventional  frame  of  the 
eye;  they  study  nature  in  preference  to  the  traditional  canon;  the 
forms  of  the  human  body  become  less  rigid,  the  muscles  are  better 
rounded  and  more  correctly  drawn,  and  a  naturalistic  tendency 
supersedes  the  conventionalism  of  the  preceding  epoch  of  decay. 
Colossal  statues  are  still  sculptured,  but  not  of  such  monstrous  pro- 
portions as  under  Ramesses  ;  at  the  same  time  that  the  number  of 
small,  charming,  sculptures,  full  of  vigour  and  (Egyptian)  grace, 
increases  considerably.  They  are  easily  recognized  by  their  finish 
and  sharp  precision  of  workmanship ;  the  aim  of  the  artist  being 
neatness  and  elegance;  as  distant  from  the  somewhat  conventional 
grandeur  of  the  XVTIth  and  XV  111th,  as  from  the  refined  delicacy 
of  the  XTTth,  or  the  honest  truthfulness  of  the  ffid  and  IVth  dynas- 
ties. The  following  inedited  head,  now  in  the  Louvre,  is  a  most 
excellent  specimen  of  the  style  of  the  Sa'ites.  It  is  of  a  greenish 
basalt,  and  was  found  broken  off  from  the  rest  of  a  full-length  figure, 
by  M.  Mariette,  amid  some  ruins  of  the  Serapeum  at  Memphis,  in 
the  midst  of  fragments  belonging  to  the  XXVIth  dynasty.  He  gave 
a  plaster-cast  of  it  (now  in  my  cabinet)  to  Mr.  Gliddon,  from  which 
the  annexed  wood-cut  [18]  has  been  drawn.  No  doubt  as  to  its  being 
&  portrait;  becaiise  the  Egyptian  sculptor  aimed  always  to  reproduce 
individuality  without  idealizing,  and  possessed  both  eye  and  hand  to 

82  Birch,  Crysl.  Pal.  Catalogue,  p.  243. 

83  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  munificence  of  France  in  fostering  archaeological  discoveries 
will,  ere  long,  place  us  in  full  possession  of  these  new  data. 


120 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 


copy  nature  with  fidelity. 


Fig.  18. 


It  corresponds  in  style  to  the  superb  torso 
of  Psametik  II.  found  at  Sais, 
and  long  in  the  public  library 


at  Cambridge.81 


Saitio  Head. 


This  second  revival  of  Egypt 
was  not  confined  to  sculpture. 
"We  see  once  more,  as  in  the 
time  of  Eamesses  and  Osorchon, 
(XVIHth  and  XXIId  dynasties, 
i.  e.  in  the  loth  and  10th  cen- 
turies b.  c.)  a  most  striking 
parallel  between  the  intellectual 
and  artistic  life  of  the  nation. 
The  new  naturalistic  phase  of 
Egyptian  art  coincides  with  an 
analogous,  most  important  step 
in  civilization,  viz :  the  introduction  of  the  Demotic  alphabet,  which 
for  its  phonetical  character85  or  comparatively  greater  simplicity  than 
either  the  hieratic  or  the  hieroglyphical  writing,  must  have  favoured 
the  diffusion  of  knowledge,  by  promoting  epistolary  intercourse 
amongst  the  Egyptians.  It  will,  therefore,  scarcely  surprise  anybody 
to  learn  that  more  than  two  thirds  of  the  papyri  in  the  Museums  and 
collections  of  Europe,  appertain  to  the  period  of  Psameticus  and  his 
successors,  although  abundant  papyric  documents  are  extant  of  a 
far  earlier  epoch.86 

Egyptian  art  lost  its  Saitic  freshness,  owing  to  the  Persian  conquest 
(b.  c.  525),  but  the  naturalistic  style  continued  down  to  the  reign  of 
the  Macedonian  dynasty  of  Ptolemies.  Under  them  Egyptian  civili- 
zation came  for  the  first  time  into  immediate  relation  and  uninter- 
rupted daily  contact  with  a  foreign  high-culture,  although  the  radical 
difference  between  the  Egyptian  and  Greek  race  prevented  amalga- 
mation on  a  larger  scale.  The  Egyptian  was  too  proud  of  hia 
millennial  civilization  to  condescend  to  learn  anything  from  the 
Greek,  whom  he  called  a  child  in  versatility,  as  well  as  in  the  his- 

M  Yobke  and  Leake,  Egyptian  Monuments  of  the  British  Museum,  London,  1827  ;  p.  17, 
PI.  XIII. 

85  Burgsch,  Grammutiea  Demotica,  1855 ;  together  'with  this  Savant's  various  publica- 
tions, cited  by  Birch,  Cryst.  Pal.  Catalogue,  p.  209 : — also  Types  of  Mankind,  Table  of  the 
"Theory  of  the  order  of  development  in  human  writings,"  pp.  630—1. 

86  They  are  innumerable.  Among  the  oldest  and  most  beautiful  is  Prisse's  folio  Hieratio 
Papyrus  lilgyptien,  Paris,  1849,  —  "sans  hesitation  le  plus  ancien  manuscrit  connu  dans  le 
monde  entier ;"  containing,  with  others,  the  royal  oval  of  SeNeWROU  (or  Senofre),  a  king 
of  old  Hid  dynasty  (De  Rouge,  Inscription  du  Tombeau  d'Aahmes,  chef  des  Nautoniers,  le. 
partie,  Paris,  1851,  p.  76). 


GENERAL    REMARKS    ON'  ICOHOGRAPHY.  121 

torical  age  of  his  nation.  "  0  Solon,  Solon !  you  Greeks  are  always 
children,"  says  Plato's  priest  of  Sais,  in  the  celebrated  bold 
romance  on  the  Atlantic  Isles.  Still,  the  Hellenic  spirit  could  not 
remain  wholly  without  influence.  Alexandria  assumed  a  cosmopoli- 
tan character,  in  which  Greek  elements  predominated ;  and  the 
Ptolemies,  surrounded  by  Greek  poets,  artists,  and  philosophers, 
enjoyed  the  resplendent  evening  of  Greek  culture  on  the  foreign  soil 
of  the  Miotic  Delta.  Indeed,  it  has  been  accurately  observed  that 
"Alexandria  was  very  Greek,  a  little  Jewish,  and  scarcely  Egyptian 
at  all." 87  With  artistic  display,  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  man- 
kind, they  celebrated  the  festivals  of  the  Olympian  gods,  whilst  with 
princely  expenditure  they  secured  all  the  treasures  of  Greek  litera- 
ture, as  if  they  entertained  a  presentiment  of  the  approaching  doom 
of  Hellenism.  But  whenever  they  went  up  the  Mle,  visiting  Mem- 
phis, Thebes,  and  upper  Egypt,  they  became  again  Pharaohs — "ever 
living,  lords  of  diadems,  watchers  of  Egypt,  chastisers  of  the  foreigners, 
golden  hawks,  greatest  of  the  powerful  kings  of  the  upper  and  lower 
country,  defenders  of  truth,  beloved  of  truth,  approved  of  the  sun, 
beloved  of  Phtah."  Their  costume  and  titles,  their  sacrifices  and 
oblations,  the  style  of  their  decrees  and  dedications,  are  substantially 
the  same  as  on  the  monuments  of  the  ancient  Pharaohs.  But  though 
it  seems  as  if  the  national  character  and  public  life  of  Egypt  itself 
had  not  undergone  any  material  change,  the  Ptolemaic  works  of  art 
reveal  the  slow  action  of  Hellenism.  Mariette's  unexpected  discovery, 
in  1850,  of  a  hemicych  formed  of  the  Greek  statues  of  Pindar,  Lycur- 
gus,  Solon,  Euripides,  Pythagoras,  Plato,  ^Eschylus,  Homer,  Aristotle, 
&c,  in  excavating  the  Memphite  Serapeum,  is  a  wonderful  proof 
of  the  manner  in  which  Hellenic  ideas  travelled  with  the  Greeks  up ' 
the  Mle.  Still,  the  elaborate  attempts  to  attain  Greek  elegance  and 
refinement,  within  the  old  traditional  forms,  resulted  only  in  degra- 
dation ;  producing  a  hybrid  style,  inferior  to  any  of  the  former  phases 
of  Egyptian  art.  The  last  known  monuments  creditable  to  native 
statuaries,  are  thus  referred  to  by  the  late  Letronne88;  —  "the 
second  is  a  bust  in  rose-granite,  of  Mctanebo,  preserved  in  the 
British  Museum  (Birch,  Arundale  and  Bonomi,  Gallery  of  Antiquities, 
PI.  45,  fig.  166),  of  very  beautiful  workmanship ;  the  third  is  that 

87  Ampere,  Voyage  et  Recherches  en  JSgypte  el  en  Nubie;  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1846, 
2d  article. 

88  La  civilisation  tgyptienne  depuis  V  elablissement  des  Grecs  sous  Psammeticus  jusqu'  a  la 
conqulte  d' Alexandre.  (Extrait  de  la  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1  Fev.  et  1  Avril,  1845, 
p.  50.)  This  refined  specimen  of  art — which  singularly  corresponds  in  execution  to  the 
Sailic  head  above  figured  (No.  18) — -may  be  seen  on  a  large  scale  in  the  Description  de 
VEgypte  (Antiq.  V.  PI.  69,  figs.  7,  8) ;  and  on  a  smaller  in  Lenormant's  Mus'ee  des  Anli- 
quites    egypliennes,  Paris,  fol.,  1840. 


122  GENERAL    REMARKS    ON    ICONOGRAPHY. 

mutilated  but  admirable  statue,  in  green  basalt,  found  at  Sebennytus, 
(Millin,  Monuments  inedits,  I.  p.  383),  and  wbicb  decorates  tbe  '  salle 
du  zodiaque '  of  tbe  Bibliotheque  royale  [nationale,  publique,  or  inrpe- 
riale,  —  as  tbe  case  may  be].  Tbis  torso,  for  tbe  purity  and  fineness 
of  Egyptian  style,  yields  in  notbing  to  tbe  most  noble  remains  of 
Egyptian  sculpture :  and  I  cannot  forget  tbat  one  of  tbe  skilful!  est 
archeologues  of  our  day,  not  being  able  to  cast  doubt  upon  tbe  name 
of  Nectanebo,  wbicb  tbis  statue  bears,  sustained  tbat  this  name  bad 
been  added,  'apres-coup,'  to  a  statue  of  tbe  time  of  Sesostris  or  of 
Menepbtba;  a  gratuitous  supposition,  rendered  altogether  useless 
through  the  observations  contained  in  this  memoir." 

The  only  passable  relics,  of  tbe  times  of  the  Lagidse,  now  extant, 
are  the  rose-granite  statues  of  Philadelphia  and  Arsinoe  at  the 
Vatican ;  and  they  are  poor  enough. 

Indigenous  art  degenerated,  however,  still  more  under  the  Roman 
dominion,80  languishing  under  the  Julian  and  Elavian  emperors, 
and  becoming  quite  rude  and  barbarous  soon  after  Hadrian :  —  the 
last  hieroglyphic  royal  ovals,  found  in  Egypt,  belong  to  the  Emperor 
Decius.90  Indigenous  Egyptian  civilization  and  art,  both  connected 
with  and  founded  upon  hieroglyphics,  expire  about  the  same  time. 

Such  is  the  brief  history  of  Egyptian  art ;  peculiarly  remarkable 
for  the  constancy  of  its  general  character  during  a  period  of  more 
than  thirty-five  centuries,  no  less  than  for  its  isolated  and  exclusively 
national  development.  The  influence  of  foreign  art  and  culture 
upon  Egypt  was  always  slight  and  prejudicial;  whilst,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Meroe  on  the  upper  Mle  —  an  Egyptian  colony  maintain- 
ing itself  only  so  long  as  its  original  Egyptian  blood  remained 
pure,91 — no  foreign  kingdom  or  people  ever  accepted  the  civilization, 
the  hieroglyphics  and  the  art  of  Egypt,  notwithstanding  that  the 
Empire  on  the  Mle  was  superior  in  culture  to  all  those  neighboring 
nations  with  whom  the  Pharaohs  came  into  contact.  Phoenicia, 
Assyria,  Persia,  and  perhaps  even  Greece  and  Etruria,  borrowed 
some  forms  of' their  art  from  Egypt;  but  these  loans  are,  on  the 
whole,  trifling,  and  insufficient  to  stamp  the  art  of  those  nations  with 
an  Egyptian  character.  In  Assyria,  as  in  Greece  and  Etruria,  art 
developed  itself  nationally,  and  in  each  region  may  always  be  con- 
sidered as  indigenous. 

89  Gad's  folio  Antiquilh  de  la  Nubie,  Denon,  and  the  Great  French  work,  contain  abundant 
examples  of  this  decline. 

90  Lepsius,  Vorlaufige  Nachricht  Uier  die  Expedition,  Berlin,  1849,  p.  29. 

91  For  proofs,  —  Abeken,  Rapport,  in  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  de  Geographic,  Paris,  Sept., 
1845,  pp.  171-2,  174,  179:— Lepsius,  Briefe,  1852,  pp.  140-9,  204,  217-9,  239,  &c. :  while 
ocular  evidence  of  this  Ethiopian  degradation  of  art  may  be  obtained  in  the  Denkmiiler, 
Abth.  VI.  bl.  2,  4,  9,  10. 


GENERAL     REMARKS    ON     ICONOGRAPHY.  123 

"We  have  selected,  for  illustrating  our  sketch  of  Egyptian  art, 
statues  in  preference  to  reliefs,  which  are  always  somewhat  repug- 
nant to  the  taste  of  the  public,  on  account  of  the  peculiar  conven- 
tional formation  of  the  eye,  drawn  in  front-view  on  profile  heads. 
Besides,  Types  of  Mankind  already  contains  copious  specimens  of 
Egyptian  royal  relief-likenesses,  from  Aahmes,  the  restorer  of  Egypt, 
down  to  Menephtah,  the  probable  Pharaoh  of  the  Exodus,  including 
also  the  Sheshonks  (SMshak),  Shabaks  and  Tirhakas,  so  familiar  to 
the  readers  of  the  Bible.  The  authority  of  those  portraits  (taken 
principally  from  Rosellini)  is  sufficiently  established  by  the  inscrip- 
tions which  accompany  them  on  the  original  sculptures ;  their  faithful- 
ness may  easily  be  tested  in  any  of  the  large  collections  of  Europe,  and 
principally  in  Egypt,  among  the  monuments ;  for  it  is  a  remarkable 
fact,  that  wherever  a  relief  was  sunk  into  the  rock,  recording  the 
deeds  of  some  individual  Pharaoh,  whether  on  the  pylones  of  the 
temples,  along  the  walls  of  tombs,  and  amid  palatial  decorations,  or 
chiselled  upon  some  tablet  on  the  remotest  borders  of  the  Empire, 
his  features,  painted  or  sculptured,  are  always  the  same,  and  may  be 
recognized  everywhere  throughout  Egypt.  It  has,  therefore,  often 
been  asked,  by  what  means  Egyptian  artists  could  attain  such  a  uni- 
formity at  a  time  when  no  coins  were  as  yet  struck,  and  the  art  of 
engraving  likenesses  (not  seals,  &c.,)  was  unknown.  It  was  very 
plausibly  suggested,  that  an  official  pattern  of  the  royal  physiognomy, 
carved  in  wood,  may  easily  have  been  circulated  all  over  the  valley 
of  the  Mle.  The  Roman  emperors  probably  neglected  the  continu- 
ance of  such  customs,  perhaps  under  belief  that  their  coins  might 
convey  a  sufficient  idea  of  their  features.  The  Egyptians,  however, 
remain  unacquainted  with  the  portraits  of  their  Roman  rulers,  whose 
effigies  on  Egyptian  and  lower-Nubian  monuments  are  altogether 
conventional,  without  any  attempt  at  portraying  individuality  and 
resemblance  to  the  Roman  Autocrats ;  whose  very  name,  as  we  see  at 
Kalabshe  and  at  Dendera,  was  often  unknown  to  natives  of  the  Nile.92 
As  a  collateral  confirmation  of  the  suggestion  about  the  circulation 
of  regal  portrait-patterns,  we  refer  to  some  analogous  preceedings 
under  Queen  Elizabeth,  which  we  translate  from  the  French  of  the 
Abbes  De  la  Chau  and  Le  Blond,93  not  being  able  to  lay  our  hands 
upon  the  original  document  mentioned  by  them. 

"  The  excessive  sensitiveness  of  Queen  Elizabeth  about  beauty,"  say  the  learned  French 
archaeologists,  "  gave  birth  to  a  most  peculiar  order  in  council,  signed  by  the  secretary 

92  Letronne,  "Sur  1'absence  du  Mot  Autocrator"  —  Mtmoires  el  Documents,  Paris,  1849, 
pp.  1-8: — Champollion-Figeao,  Fourier  el  NapoUon,  l'£gyple  el  les  cent  jours,  Paris,  1844, 
pp.  63-5. 

63  Pierres  gravies  du  Cabinet  Orleans,  II.  p.  1 94. 


124  THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 

Cecil,  and  promulgated  in  1563.  All  the  painters  and  engravers  were  prohibited  by  it  to 
continue  making  portraits  of  the  Queen,  until  some  good  artist  should  have  made  a  truthful 
likeness,  to  serve  as  model  for  all  the  copies  to  be  made  in  future,  after  the  model  has,  upon 
examination,  been  found  to  be  as  good  and  exact  as  it  could  be.  It  is  further  said  that  the 
natural  desire  of  all  the  subjects  of  the  Queen,  of  every  rank  and  condition,  to  possess  the 
portrait  of  H.  M.,  having  induced  many  painters,  engravers,  and  other  artists,  to  multiply 
copies,  it  has  been  found  that  not  one  of  them  has  succeeded  in  rendering  all  the  beauty  and 
charms  of  S.  M.  with  exactness,  much  to  the  daily  regret  and  complaints  of  her  well-be- 
loved subjects.  Order  was,  therefore,  given  for  the  appointment  of  commissioners  (the 
French  text  says  '  experts ')  to  inquire  into  the  fidelity  of  the  copies,  and  not  to  tolerate 
any  iDne,  marked  by  deformity  or  defects,  from  which,  by  the  grace  of  God,  Her  Majesty 
was  free." 

Iii  conclusion,  let  us  rejoice  with  our  collaborator,  M.  Maury,  that 
"  the  school  of  Champollion,  therefore,  feels  every  day  the  ground 
more  steady  beneath  its  tread ;  every  day  it  beholds  those  doubts  dis- 
sipating which  at  first  offered  themselves  to  its  disciples  in  the  face 
of  denials  made  by  jealous  or  stubborn  minds.  *****  It  is  to  this 
'  monumental  geology '  (after  all)  that  we  are  indebted  for  the  demon- 
stration of  the  two  great  historical  laws  that  dominate  over  all  the 
annals  of  Egypt;  viz:  the  permanence  of  races,  and  the  constant  mo- 
bility of  tongues,  beliefs,  and  arts, — two  truths  which  are  precisely  the 
inverse  of  that  which  had  been  for  a  long  time  admitted."94 


III.  —  THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 

The  term  "  Shemitic "  (or  Semitic),  as  it  is  popularly  applied  to 
certain  races,  languages,  and  types  of  physiognomy,  has  no  reference 
to  the  genealogy  or  rather  geography  of  the  Xth  chapter  of  Genesis, 
since  it  includes  the  Phoenicians,  who,  according  to  this  old  docu- 
ment, are  descendants  of  Ham ;  whilst  Elam,  Assur  and  Lud,  sons 
of  Shem,  must  be  classed  among  races  different  in  character  and  lan- 
guage from  what  most  scholars,  since  Eichhorn,  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  call  Shemitic.  This  word  is  now  constantly  used  to  desig- 
nate the  Syro-Arab  nations;  that  is  to  say,  the  Syrian,  Phoenician, 
and  Hebrew  tribes  (including  Edom,  Moab,  Ammon,  Midian,  and 
the  Nabatseans  of  Harran),  and  the  Arabs  both  Yoktanide  (Himyarite 
and  ^Ethiopian)  and  Ishmaelite  or  Maadic.  All  those  tribes  and 
nations  form  a  most  striking  contrast  to  the  Arian  or  Japetide  races, 
in  language  as  well  as  in  their  national  character. 

It  is  difficult  to  over-state  the  influence  of  the  Shemites  on  human 

91  Des  travaux  modernes  sur  TJSgypte  Ancienne,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  Sept.  1855,  p. 
1078. 


THE    ART    OF     THE     SHEMITES.  125 

civilization.  Hence  it  has  been  said  without  exaggeration,  that  all 
the  moral  and  religious  progress  of  mankind  may  be  summed  up  in 
the  combined  action  of  the  Arian  and  Shemitic  races :  the  former 
being  the  continuous  warp,  the  latter  the  intersecting  woof.05  Whilst 
the  civilization  of  Egypt,  too  proud  to  seek  proselytes,  remained  iso- 
lated and  spell-bound  within  the  limits  of  its  Mle-valley,  the  culture 
of  the  Shemites  was  eminently  prolific  and  propagandist.  Though 
they  never  exceeded  thirty  millions  in  number,96  still  their  peculiar 
restlessness  and  commercial  tendency,  their  migrations,  deportations, 
colonizations,  and  wars  of  conquest,  which  dispersed  them  all  over 
the  ancient  world,  multiplied,  as  it  were,  their  number  by  locomo- 
tion, and  brought  them  into  a  kind  of  ubiquitous  contact  with  most 
of  the  progressive  races  of  mankind.  The  Japetides  (Indo-Europeans, 
Arians,  Iranians,)  surpass  the  Shemites  at  least  ten  times  in  extent; 
yet,  nevertheless,  their  civilization  is  deeply  and  lastingly  affected 
by,  and  indebted  to,  the  Shemites,  without  having  been  able  to 
absorb  and  to  transform  them  by  amalgamation.  Down  to  our  days 
the  Shemite  race  maintain  their  peculiar  type  so  constantly,  that  their 
pedigree  is  still  unmistakably  stamped  upon  their  features ;  and  it 
is  a  curious  fact  that  among  the  lower  classes  in  central  and  north- 
eastern Europe,  the  consciousness  of  a  difference  of  race  remained  so 
strong  both  with  Shemites  and  Japetides,  as  often  to  prevent  amal- 
gamation, even  where  the  difference  of  religion  had  ceased. 

There  are  principally  three  nations  among  the  Shemites  which 
have  become  of  the  highest  importance  for  the  history  of  mankind. 
To  the  Phoenicians, — those  first  explorers  of  the  Mediterranean  and 
eastern  Atlantic,  —  merchant-princes,  manufacturers,  and  colonizers 
of  antiquity  —  we  owe  the  phonetic  Alphabet,  and  probably  the 
coinage  of  money.  East  and  South  to  Phoenicia  dwelt  the  Hebrews, 
who,  though  numerically  few,  have  by  their  monotheism  become 
the  basis  of  modern  civilization ;  whose  financial  genius  moreover 
continues  to  be  felt  in  all  the  great  money-marts,  upon  which  their 
invention  of  bills  of  exchange  has  concentrated  the  mobilized  pro- 
perty of  the  world.  Further  to  the  South  we  meet  with  the  Arabs, 
destroyers  of  idolatry,  conquerors  of  northern  Africa,  civilizers  of 

95  Bunsen,  JEgyptms  Sidle,  preface,  xii. 

s6  According  to  Renan's,  rough  estimate,  their  actual  number  is  the  following: — 

In  Arabia  proper,  about 6,000,000 

The  Syrians  and  Arabs  of  Asiatic  Turkey 6,000,000 

The  Arabs  of  Africa:  Egypt,  Barbary,  Morocco,  Sahara,  Sudan..  10,000,000 

Shemitic  Abyssinians 3,000,000 

Jews  all  over  the  world 4,000,000 

— (Hisloire  el  Systeme  compare"  rles  languas  almitiquee,  p.  41.) 


126  THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 

the  Black  races,  and  merchants  all  along  the  shores  of  the  Indian 
ocean. 

All  these  carriers  of  civilization  never  knew  the  feeling  of  plastic 
and  pictorial  beauty.  Painting  and  sculpture  were  proscribed  among 
the  Hebrews  and  Arabs  by  the  most  sacred  precepts  of  religion,97 
whilst  art  never  became  national  with  the  Phoenicians;  who  bor- 
rowed its  forms  in  turn  from  Egyptians,  Assyrians  and  Greeks,  and 
often  relapsed  into  their  original  barbarism  of  taste.  But  before  we 
subject  Shemitic  art  to  a  closer  consideration,  let  us  throw  a  glance 
on  the  peculiar  civilization  of  that  highly  gifted  race  whose  fortunes 
were  always  connected  with  the  history  of  mankind,  and  whose 
culture  modified  Indo-European  civilization  repeatedly  and  in  many 
respects. 

M.  Ernest  Renan,  in  his  History  of  the  Shemitic  languages,98 
describes  the  character  of  the  Shemites  in  the  most  eloquent  words, 
which,  however,  we  must  restrict  in  application  to  the  Hebrew  and 
Arab  tribes,  inasmuch  as  they  evidently  are  incomplete  as  regards 
the  Phoenicians  and  Syrians.  Besides,  we  are  bound  to  remind  the 
reader  that  the  author,  carried  away  by  the  flow  of  his  eloquence,  is 
apt  to  over-state  his  case.     We  quote  the  following  passage : 

"Without  predetermining  the  important  question  of  the  primitive  unity  or  diversity  of 
the  Arian  and  Shemitic  languages,  we  must  say  that,  in  the  present  state  of  science,  the 
Shemitic  languages  must  be  considered  as  corresponding  to  a  distinct  division  of  mankind. 
In  fact,  the  character  of  the  nations  speaking  them,  is  marked  in  history  by  as  original  fea- 
tures as  the  languages  themselves,  which  served  as  a  formula  and  boundary  to  their  mind. 
It  is  true  that  it  is  less  in  political  than  in  religious  life  that  their  influence  has  been  felt. 
Antiquity  shows  them  scarcely  playing  any  active  part  in  the  great  conquests  which  swept 
over  Asia:  the  civilization  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  in  its  essential  features,  does  not  belong 
to  nations  of  that  race,  and  before  the  powerful  impulse  given  by  a  new  creed  to  the  Arab 
tribes,  it  would  be  in  vain  to  seek  the  traces  of  any  great  Shemitic  empire  in  history. 
But  what  they  were  unable  to  do  in  the  sphere  of  external  power  they  accomplished  in  the 
moral  sphere,  and  we  may,  without  exaggeration,  attribute  to  them  at  least  one  half  of  the 
intellectual  work  of  humanity.  Of  the  two  symbols  of  the  mind  striving  for  truth,  science 
or  philosophy  remained  entirely  foreign  to  them;  but  they  always  understood  religion  with  a 
superior  instinct;  they  comprehended  it,  I  may  say,  with  a  sense  peculiar  to  themselves. 
The  reflecting,  independent,  earnest,  courageous,  in  one  word  the  philosophical  research 
of  truth,  seems  to  be  the  heir-loom  of  that  Indo-European  race,  which,  from  the  bottom  of 
India  to  the  extreme  West  and  North,  and  from  the  most  remote  ages  to  modern  times,  has 
always  sought  to  explain  God,  and  man,  and  the  world,  by  reasoning;  and  accordingly  left 
behind  it  —  as  landmarks  of  the  different  stations  of  its  history  —  systems  of  philosophy, 
always  and  everywhere  agreeing  with  the  laws  of  a  logical  development.  But  to  the  She- 
mitic race  belong  those  firm  and  positive  intuitions  which  removed  at  once  the  veil  from 
Godhead,  and  without  long   reflection  and  reasoning  reached   the   purest  religious  form 

97  Exodus,  xx.,  4;  Deuteron,  V.,  8: —  Throughout  Mohammed's  Kur'an  these  prohibi- 
tions abound. 

98  Bistoire  generate  et  Sysieme  compare'  des  langues  semitiques.  Ouvrage  couronne'  par 
l'lnstitut.     Imprimerie  Imperiale,  1855.     Vol.  i.  p.  3,  seqq. 


THE    ART    OF    THE     SHEMITES.  127 

antiquity  ever  knew.  The  birthplace  of  philosophy  is  India  and  Greece,  amidst  an  inquisi- 
tive race,  deeply  preoccupied  by  the  search  after  the  secret  of  all  things ;  but  the  psalm  and 
the  prophecy,  the  wisdom  concealed  m  riddles  and  symbols,  the  pure  hymn,  the  revealed 
book,  are  the  inheritance  of  the  theocratic  race  of  the  Shemites.  This  is  above  all  others 
the  people  of  Godhead ;  it  is  the  people  of  religions,  destined  to  create  them  and  to  carry 
them  abroad.  And  indeed,  is  it  not  remarkable  that  the  three  monotheistic  religions, 
which  until  now  have  acted  the  most  important  part  in  the  history  of  civilization,  the  three 
religions  marked  by  a  peculiar  character  of  duration,  of  fecundity  and  of  proselytism,  so 
thoroughly  interlaced  with  one  another  as  to  appear  like  three  branches  of  the  same  tree, 
like  three  expressions  unequally  correct  of  the  same  idea,— is  it  not  remarkable,  I  repeat, 
that  all  the  three  were  born  among  Shemitic  nations,  and  have  started  from  among  them 
to  pursue  their  high  destinies  ?  There  is  but  a  few  days'  journey  from  Jerusalem  to  Mount 
Sinai,  and  from  Sinai  to  Mecca. 

"The  Shemitic  race  has  neither  the  elevation  of  spiritualism  known  only  to  India  and 
Germany,  nor  the  feeling  for  measure  and  perfect  beauty  bequeathed  by  Greece  to  the 
neo-Latin  nations,  nor  the  delicate  and  deep  sensitiveness  characteristical  of  the  Celts. 
Shemitic  conscience  is  clear,  but  narrow ;  it  wonderfully  understands  unity,  but  cannot 
comprehend  multiplicity.     Monotheism  sums  up  and  explains  all  its  features. 

"  It  is  the  glory  of  the  Shemitic  race  to  have  in  her  earliest  days  arrived  at  that  notion 
of  Godhead  which  aJJ  the  other  nations  had  to  adopt  on  her  example  and  on  the  faith  of  her 
preaching.  She  has  never  conceived  the  government  of  the  world  otherwise  than  as  an 
absolute  monarchy;  her  "Theodicy"  has  not  advanced  one  single  step  since  the  book  of 
Job ;  the  grandeur  and  the  aberrations  of  Polytheism  remained  foreign  to  her.  No  other 
race  can  of  itself  discover  Monotheism;  India,  which  has  philosophized  with  so  much 
originality  and  depth,  has,  up  to  our  days,  not  grasped  it ;  and  all  the  vigour  of  the  Hellenic 
spirit  could  not  have  sufficed  to  lead  mankind  to  Monotheism  without  the  co-operation  of  the 
Shemites ;  but  we  can  likewise  state,  that  the  Shemites  would  not  have  mastered  the  dog- 
ma of  the  unity  of  Godhead,  had  they  not  found  its  germ  in  the  most  imperious  instincts  of 
their  souls  and  of  their  hearts.  They  were  unable  to  conceive  variety,  plurality,  or  sex,  in 
Godhead :  the  word  goddess  would  be  the  most  horrible  barbarism  in  Hebrew."  All  the  names 
by  which  the  Shemites  ever  designated  Godhead :-  El,  Eloh,  Adon,  Baal,  Elion,  Shaddai, 
Jehovah,  Allah,  even  if  they  take  the  plural  form,  imply  the  supreme  indivisible  power 
of  perfect  unity.  Nature,  on  the  other  hand,  has  little  importance  in  Shemitic  religions, — 
the  desert  is  monotheistic.  Sublime  in  its  immense  uniformity,  it  revealed  immediately  the 
idea  of  the  infinite  to  men,  but  not  the  incessantly  productive  life,  which  Nature,  where  she 
is  more  prolific,  imparts  to  other  nations.  This  is  the  reason  why  Arabia  was  always  the 
bulwark  of  the  most  exalted  monotheism  ;  for  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  seek  in  Mohammed 
the  founder  of  monotheism  in  Arabia.  The  worship  of  the  Supreme  God  (Allah  ia&la)  was 
always  at  the  bottom  of  Arabian  religion." 

"  The  Shemites  never  had  mythology.  The  clear  and  precise  way  in  which  they  conceived 
Godhead  as  distinct  from  the  world,  not  begetting  and  not  begotten,  and  having  no  like, 
excluded  that  grand  poetry  in  which  India,  Persia,  Greece  [and  the  Teutonic  races],  gave 
vent  to  their  imagination,  leaving  the  boundaries  between  God,  mankind,  and  nature,  unde- 
fined and  floating.  Mythology  is  the  expression  of  pantheism  in  religion,  and  the  Shemitic 
spirit  is  the  most  antagonistic  to  pantheism.     What  a  distance  between  the  simple  concep- 

99  The  author  forgets,  apparently,  the  goddesses  of  Syria  and  Phoenicia,  the  female  idols 
destroyed  by  the  Arabs  upon  their  conversion  to  Islam,  and  the  Shemitic  adoration  of  the 
Baetyles  (Beth-El),  the  shapeless  stones  so  often  figured  on  coins.  The  black  stone  of  the 
Kaaba  belongs  to  the  same  class,  and  reminds  us  nearly  of  Fetishism.  [Fresnel,  when 
consul  at  Djidda,  sent  his  slave  to  Mecca,  and  learned  from  him  that,  although  the  pilgrims 
had  nearly  kissed  off  the  features,  the  stone  still  preserves  the  remains  of  a  human  face! 
(IVme  Lettre,  "Djeddeh,  Jan.  1838."— Journal  Asiatique.)—G.  R,.  G.] 


128  THE    AET    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 

tion  of  a  God,  distinct  from  the  world,  which  he  forms  according  to  his  will,  as  a  vase  is 
moulded  by  the  hands  of  the  potter,  and  those  Indo-European  theogonies,  attributing  a 
divine  soul  to  Nature,  conceiving  life  as  a  struggle,  and  the  world  as  a  perpetual  change, 
thus  carrying,  as  it  were,  the  ideas  of  revolution  and  progress  among  the  dynasties  of 
Gods! 

"  The  intolerance  of  the  Shemites  is  the  natural  result  of  their  monotheism.  Indo-Euro- 
pean nations,  before  their  conversion  to  Shemitic  ideas,  never  considered  their  religions  as 
an  absolute  truth ;  they  took  them  rather  for  a  family  heir-loom,  and  remained  equally 
foreign  to  intolerance  and  to  proselytism.100  It  is,  therefore,  exclusively  among  Indo-Euro- 
peans  that  we  meet  with  freedom  of  thought,  with  a  spirit  of  criticism  and  of  individual 
research.  The  Shemites,  on  the  contrary,  aspiring  to  realize  a  worship  independent  of  any 
provincial  variations,  were  led  in  consistency  to  declare  all  other  religions  than  their  own 
to  be  mischievous.  In  this  sense,  intolerance  is  a  Shemitic  fact,  and  a  portion  of  the  in- 
heritance, good  and  bad,  which  this  race  has  bequeathed  to  mankind. 

"The  absence  of  philosophical  and  scientific  culture  among  the  Shemites  maybe  derived 
from  that  want  of  breadth  and  diversity,  and  therefore  of  an  analytical  turn  of  mind,  which 
characterizes  them.  The  faculties  begetting  mythology  are,  in  fact,  the  same  which  beget 
philosophy.  Stricken  by  the  unity  of  the  laws  governing  the  world,  the  Shemites  saw  in  the 
development  of  things  nothing  but  the  unalterable  fulfilment  of  the  will  of  a  superior  being ; 
they  never  conceived  multiplicity  in  nature.  But  the  conception  of  multiplicity  in  the  universe 
becomes  polytheism  with  nations  which  are  still  in  their  infancy,  and  science  with  nations 
that  have  arrived  at  maturity.  This  is  the  reason  why  Shemitic  wisdom  never  advanced 
beyond  the  proverb  and  the  parable, — points  of  departure  for  Greek  philosophy.  The  books 
of  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  which  represent  the  highest  culmination  of  Shemitic  philosophy, 
turn  the  problem  over  and  over  again  in  all  directions,  without  advancing  one  step  nearer 
to  the  solution ;  to  them  the  dialectic  and  close  reasoning  of  Socrates  is  altogether  wanting: 
even  when  Ecclesiastes  seems  to  approach  a  solution,  it  is  only  in  order  to  arrive  at 
formulas  antagonistic  to  science,  such  as  "Vanity  of  vanities" — -"nothing  is  new  under 
the  sun,"  —  "he  that  increaseth  knowledge  increaseth  sorrow,"  —  formulas  the  result  of 
which  is,  to  enjoy  life,  and  to  serve  God:  and  indeed  these  are  the  two  poles  of  Shemitic 
existence. 

"  The  Shemites  are  nearly  entirely  devoid  of  inquisitiveness.  Their  idea  of  the  power 
of  God  is  such,  that  nothing  can  astonish  them.  To  the  most  surprising  accounts,  to  sights 
most  likely  to  strike  him,  the  Arab  opposes  but  one  reflection,  "God  is  powerful!"  whilst, 
when  in  doubt,  he  avoids  to  come  to  a  conclusion,  and  after  having  expounded  the  reasons 
for  and  against,  escapes  from  decision  by  the  formula   'God  knows  it!' 

"  The  poetry  of  the  Shemitic  nations  is  distinguished  by  the  same  want  of  variety.  The 
eminently  subjective  character  of  Arabic  and  Hebrew  poetry  results  from  another  essential 
feature  of  Shemitic  spirit,  the  complete  absence  of  creative  imagination,  and  accordingly 
of  fiction. 

"Hence,  amongthese  peoples,  we  may  explain  the  absolute  absence  of  plastic  arts.  Even 
tho  adornments  of  manuscripts  by  which  Turks  and  Persians  have  displayed  such  a  lively  sen- 
timent for  color,  is  antipathetic  to  the  Arabs,  and  altogether  unknown  in  countries  where 
the  Arab  spirit  has  remained  untainted,  as  for  instance  in  Morocco.  Music,  of  all  the  arts 
most  subjective,  is  the  only  one  known  to  Shemites.  Painting  and  sculpture  have  always 
been  banished  from  them  by  religious  prohibition ;  their  realism  cannot  be  reconciled  with 
oreative  invention,  which  is  the  essential  condition  of  the  two  arts.  A  Mussulman  to  whom 
the  traveller  Bruce  showed  the  painting  of  a  fish,  asked  him,  after  a  moment  of  surprise :  "  If 
this  fish,  on  the  day  of  judgment,  rises  against  thee  and  accuses  thee  by  saying,  Thou  hast 

100  This  does  not  exclude  their  rigor  against  apostasy  or  infidelity  at  different  periods  of 
their  history,  since  it  implied  an  attack  upon  their  national  existence.  With  the  Greeks, 
for  instance,  religion  was  intimately  connected  with  nationality,  and  their  nationality  being 
exclusive,  (for  every  foreigner  was  a  barbarian.)  proselytism  became  impossible. 


THE    ART    OF    THE     SHEMITES.  129 

given  me  a  body,  but  no  living  soul,  what  -wilt  thou  reply  V  The  anathemas  against  any 
figured  representation,. repeated  over  and  over  again  in  the  Mosaic  books,  and  the  icono- 
clastic zeal  of  Mohammed,  evidently  prove  the  tendency  of  those  nations  to  take  the  statue 
for  a  real  individual  being.  Artistic  race's,  accustomed  to  detach  the  symbol  from  the  idea, 
■were  not  obliged  to  act  with  such  severity." 

Kenan's  remarks,  as  already  mentioned,  apply  principally  to  the 
monotheistic  branches  of  the  Shemitic  race,  at  their  secondary  stage 
of  development :  he  ignores  the  peculiarities  of  the  Phoenician  nation, 
yet  mankind  owes  nearly  as  much  to  the  polytheistic  branch  of  the 
Shemites,  in  spite  of  their  voluptuous  and  cruel  worship,  including 
human  sacrifices  and  indescribable  abominations,  so  denounced  in 
Hebrew  and  later  Arabian  literature, — as  to  their  southern  brethren 
of  higher  and  purer  morals.  According  to  the  authors  of  antiquity, 
as  well  as  to  all  modern  philologists,  the  pure  phonetic  alphabet  is 
an  invention  of  the  Phoenician  mind.101  All  the  different  phonetic 
alphabets  of  the  world,  — perhaps  with  the  exception  of  the  cuneatic 
and  Hindoo  (Lat  and  Devanagiri)  writing, — have  originated  from  the 
Phoenician  letters ;  the  Arian  nations  of  course  eliminating  the  She- 
mitic gutturals,  and  replacing  them  by  their  own  peculiar  modifica- 
tions of  the  sound.  The  hieroglyphics  of  Egypt  remained  confined 
to  the  Nile-valley ;  the  Devanagiri  to  the  two  Indian  peninsulas  and 
their  dependencies ;  the  cuneiform  character  to  the  basin  of  the 
Tigris  and  Euphrates,  and  to  the  highland  flanking  it  to  the  east ; 
whereas  the  Phoenician  alphabet  and  those  derived  from  it  have  been 
diffused  over  all  the  white  race,  not  only  Shemites,  but  Japetides  and 
Turanians ;  and  this  fact  practically  proves  the  diffusion  of  Shemitic 
influence. 

Second  in  importance  only  to  the  phonetic  alphabet,  is  the  inven- 
tion of  coined  money,  which  is  again  Phoenician ;  although  the  Isle 
of  ^Egina  and  the  empire  of  Lydia  made  rival  claims  to  the  priority 
of  the  invention.102    But  ^Egina,  the  small  island  between  Attica 

101  Compare  for  authorities:  Types  of  Mankind,  "Palasographic  excursus  on  the  art  of 
writing,  by  Geo.  R.  Gliddon ;"  and  Renan,  Op.  cit.,  I.  p.  67.  "  L'ecriture  alphabetique  est 
depuis  une  haute  antiquity  le  privilege  particulier  des  Semites.  C'est  aux  Semites  que 
le  monde  doit  l'alphabet  de  22  lettres." 

102  The  earliest  standard  of  coinage  and  of  weights  and  measures  in  Greece  was  certainly 
that  of  iEgina,  the  invention  of  which  was  attributed  to  Pheidon,  king  of  Argos,  and  lord 
of  -33gina.  Still,  criticism  cannot  but  take  Pheidon  for  a  semi-mythical  person,  and  the 
authorities  about  his  epoch  are  irreconcilably  at  variance  with  one  another.  The  Parian- 
marble  chronicle  places  him  about  895  B.  c. :  Pausanias  and  Strabo  between  770-730  B.  c, 
whilst  Herodotus  (VII.  27)  connects  him  with  events  which  took  place  [ about  600  B.  c. 
Ottfeied  Muller,  therefore  (Dorier,  iii.  6)  assumes  two  Pheidons ;  and  Weissenboko 
suggests  Pausanias  may  have  placed  him  originally  in  the  26th  Olympiad,  which,  by  an  error 
of  the  copyist,  became  the  6th  in  the  extant  MS.  Whatever  be  the  epoch  of  Pheidon,  so 
much  is  certain,  that  the  iEginean  standard  of  weights  and  measures  is  not  his  invention. 
Boeck,  in  his  "  Metrologische  TTntersuchungen,"  has  established  the  fact  that  it  was  borrowed 
from  Babylon ;  Pheidon  can  therefore  have  only  introduced  it  into  Greece. 

9 


130  THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 

and  the  Peloponnesus,  though  rich  in  silver-mines,  possessed  neither 
colonies  nor  extensive  and  uninterrupted  foreign  commerce,  which 
alone  can  have  given  rise  to  the  desire  of  a  circulating  medium  of 
currency.  •  Lydia,  equally  devoid  of  colonies  and  foreign  extensive 
commerce,  had  not  even  a  supply  of  gold  before  the  conquest  of 
Phrygia.  The  first  money  could  not  have  been  struck  by  any  but 
a  merchant  nation.  Neither  Pharaonic  Egypt,  nor  the  empires  of 
Assyria  and  Babylon,  nor  the  Hebrew  kingdoms,  knew  the  use  of 
coins.  They  weighed  the  gold  and  silver  as  the  price  for  commodi- 
ties bought  and  sold;  but  they  never  tried  to  divide  it  into  equal 
pieces,  or  to  mark  it  according  to  its  weight  and  value.  It  was  at  a 
comparatively  late  period,  scarcely  prior  to  the  seventh  century 
before  our  era,  that  gold  and  silver  were  struck  by  public  authority, 
to  be  the  circulating  medium.  Alcidamas,  the  Athenian  rhetor  of 
the  fourth  century  B.  c,  tells  us,  that  "  coins  were  invented  by  the 
Phoenicians,  they  being  the  wisest  and  most  cunning  of  the  Barba- 
rians ; — out  of  the  ingot  they  took  equal  portions  and  stamped  them 
with  a  sign,  according  to  the  weight,  the  heavier  and  the  lighter."  m 
— 'OSvSaevs  xaTa  itpoSoti'iag  riaXau,-/](5ou<:. —  (See  Alcid.) 

Such  are  the  lasting  benefits  mankind  owes  to  the  Shemitic  race, 
which,  besides,  was  in  antiquity  the  forerunner  of  Indo-European 
civilization  on  the  Mediterranean,  and  along  the  Eastern  shores  of 
the  Atlantic,  and  subsequently  again  in  Hindostan  and  Java  during 
the  middle  ages.  Even  now  it  paves  the  way  for  European  culture 
and  commerce  in  the  Soodan,  and  central  Africa.  These  highly  gifted 
carriers  of  civilization  never  rose,  notwithstanding,  to  any  eminence 
in  imitative  arts,  and  were  unable  to  invent  or  establish  a  national 
style  of  painting  or  sculpture.  As  to  the  Hebrews  and  the  Arabs, 
this  deficiency  is  often  attributed  to  the  prohibitions  of  the  Penta- 
teuch and  the  Kur'an :  but  it  will  probably  be  safer  to  derive  the 
prohibition  from  the  want  of  artistical  feeling  among  the  nations  for 
whom  the  law  was  framed.  Besides,  the  Arabs,  even  before  Mo- 
hammed, had  few  or  no  idols  of  human  form,  no  plastical  art  and 
no  pictures ;  at  the  same  time  that  the  Kur'an  could  not  prevent  the 

103  The  standard  weights  of  Nimrood,  in  the  British  Museum,  carry  now  even  the  Babylonian 
talent  further  back,  to  Assyria,  and  it  is  not  unimportant  that  their  inscriptions  are  either 
purely  Phoenician,  or  bilingual. — As  to  coinage,  it  is  everywhere  originally  connected  with 
the  standard  of  weights :  it  is  its  result,  its  most  practical  application  to  silver  and  gold  as 
measures  of  value.  The  standard  of  measures  must  have  preceded  the  standard  of  coinage, 
and  cannot  be  a  contemporary  invention.  Pheidon  may  indeed  have  been  the  first  who 
struck  coin  in  Greece,  and  have  introduced  coinage  together  with  the  Babylonian  standard 
of  measures  and  weights  from  Phoenicia ;  but  the  Greek  tradition  which  attributes  to  him 
the  invention  both  of  the  standard' of  weights  and  of  coinage,  is  as  illogical  as  regards 
coins,  as  it  is  historically  false  as  regards  weights. 


THE    ART     OF    THE     SHEMITES.  131 

Perso-Aflghan  Mussulmans,  both  the  SheeS  and  the  Sunnee,  to  con- 
tinue drawing  and  painting,  and  even  sculpturing  reliefs.  Down  to 
the  present  day,  portraits  are  painted  at  Delhi  and  Cabool  and  Tehe- 
ran by  true  believers,  without  any  religious  scruples ;  whereas  the 
Arab  envoy  of  the  Sultan  of  Morocco  to  Queen  Victoria,  whose 
daguerreotype  was  taken  without  his  knowledge  at  Claudet's  in  Re- 
gent Street,  felt  himself  both  insulted  and  defiled  for  having  had 
his  form  "  stolen  from  him,"  as  he  expressed  himself. 

With  the  polytheistic  branch  of  the  Shemites,  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing were  not  prohibited  by  religion ;  and  still  no  national  style  of 
art  ever  developed  itself  among  the  Syrians  and  Phoenicians,  notwith- 
standing their  wealth  and  industry,  and  love  of  display. 

The  extent  and  number  of  the  monuments  of  art  in  Syria,  Phoe- 
nicia, Palestine,  and  Idumsea,  and  of  those  remains  which,  by  their 
Phoenician  or  Punic  inscription,  are  designated  as  Shemitic,  is  not 
at  all  insignificant ;  although,  measured  by  the  standard  of  Egyptian, 
Greek,  or  Etruscan  antiquities,  they  are,  indeed,  comparatively  small. 
Still,  these  monuments  form  together  no  homogeneous  class,  charac- 
terized by  certain  peculiarities  common  to  them  all.  Nothing  but 
the  place  where  they  were  found,  or  the  Phoenician  characters  with 
which  they  are  inscribed,  designates  them  as  Shernitic.  They  might 
all  have  been  made  by  foreigners :  Egyptians,  Assyrians,  Greeks, 
Etruscans,  or  barbarians.  Of  the  ruins  still  extant,  Petra,  the  rock- 
town  of  the  ISTabatseans,  exhibits  late  Greek ;  Baalbek  (Heliopolis) 
and  Palmyra,  late  Roman  forms  of  architecture.  The  rock-tombs 
of  Jerusalem  were  evidently  excavated  by  artists  perfectly  conversant 
with  the  Dorian  column,  who  remained  faithful  to  the  Hellenic  spirit 
of  art,  notwithstanding  that  they  introduced  grapes  and  palm-trees, 
and  some  oriental  forms,  into  the  decoration  of  their  rock-structures. 

As  to  Shemitic  statues  and  reliefs,  the  most  important  among  them 
undoubtedly  is  the  black  basahVsareophagus  of  Eshmunazar,  king  of 
Sidon,  discovered  in  February,  1855,  near  Sayda,  the  old  Sidon.  The 
French  Consul,  M.  Peretie,  acquired  it,  and  sent  it  to  France,  where 
it  has  been  deposited  in  the  Louvre,  as  a  worthy  companion  to  the 
kingly  monuments  of  Egyptian  Pharaohs  and  Assyrian  .monarchs. 
The  Phoenician  inscription  of  the  sarcophagus,  read  and  analyzed  by 
the  Due  de  Luynes,104  is  one  of  the  most  striking  expressions  of  She- 
mitic feelings.     It  runs  as  follows : 

104  Mr.  Dietrich  of  Marburg,  Dr.  Riidiger,  Prof.  Land,  and  others,  likewise  published 
translations  of,  and  observations  on,  this  inscription,  independently  of  the  French  Duke, 
•whose  translation,  however,  was  read  at  the  Institute  previously  to  the  publications  of  the 
learned  Germans.  Besides,  his  Memoir,  published  in  1856,  is  by  far  more  complete  as 
regards  the  analysis  of  the  inscription,  and  the  geographical,  philological,  and  historical 


132  THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 

"  In  the  month  of  Bui,  in  the  fourteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  me,  Eshmunazar,  king  of  the 
Sidonians,  son  of  king  Thebunath,  king  of  the  Sidonians,  the  king  Eshmunazar  spake  and 
said : 

"  Amidst  my  feasts  and  my  perfumed  wines,  I  am  ravished  from  the  assembly  of  men  to 
pronounce  a  lamentation  and  to  die,  and  to  remain  lying  in  this  coffin,  in  this  tomb,  in  the 
place  of  sepulture  which  I  have  constructed. 

•'  By  this  lamentation  I  conjure  any  royal  race  and  any  man,  not  to  open  this  funeral 
bed,  not  to  search  the  asylum  of  the  faithful  (for  there  are  effigies  of  gods  among  them,) 
not  to  remove  the  cover  of  this  coffin,  not  to  build  upon  the  elevation  of  this  funeral  bed, 
the  elevation  of  the  bed  of  my  sleep,  even  should  some  one  say :  '  Listen  not  to  those  who 
are  humiliated,  (in  death) :  for  any  royal  race,  or  any  man  who  should  defile  the  elevation 
of  this  funeral  bed,  whether  he  removes  the  cover  of  this  coffin,  or  builds  upon  the  monu- 
ment which  covers  it,  may  they  have  no  funeral  bed  reserved  for  themselves  among  the 
Rephaim  (shadows) :  may  they  be  deprived  of  sepulture,  leaving  behind  them  neither  sons 
nor  posterity :  and  may  the  great  Gods  (Alonim)  keep  them  confined  in  hell. 

"  If  it  be  a  royal  race,  may  its  accursed  crime  fall  back  upon  their  children  up  to  the 
extinction  of  their  posterity. 

"  If  it  is  a  (private)  man  who  opens  the  elevation  of  this  funeral  bed,  or  who  removes  the 
cover  of  my  coffin,  and  the  corpses  of  the  royal  family,  this  man  is  sacrilegious. 

"  May  his  stem  not  grow  up  from  the  roots,  and  not  bring  forth  fruits ;  may  he  be  marked 
by  the  reprobation  among  the  living  under  the  sun. 

"  For,  worthy  to  be  pitied,  I  have  been  ravished  amidst  my  banquets  and  my  perfumed 
wines,  to  leave  the  assembly  of  men,  and  to  pronounce  my  lamentation,  then  to  die. 

"I  rest  here,  in  truth,  I,  Eshmunazar,  king  of  the  Sidonians,  son  of  king  Thebunath, 
king  of  Sidonians,  son  of  the  son  of  king  Eshmunazar,  king  of  the  Sidonians,  and  with  me, 
my  mother  Amestoreth,  who  was  priestess  of  Astarte,  in  the  palace  of  the  queen,  daughter 
of  king  Eshmunazar,  king  of  the  Sidonians,  who  built  the  temple  of  the  great  Gods,  the 
temple  of  Astarte  at  Sidon,  the  maritime  town,  and  we  both  have  consecrated  magnificent 
offerings  to  the  goddess  Astarte.  With  me  rests  also  Onchanna,  who,  in  honor  of  Eshmun, 
the  sacred  God,  built  Enedalila  in  the  mountain,  and  made  me  magnificent  presents;  and 
Onchanna,  who  built  temples  to  the  great  Gods  of  the  Sidonians,  at  Sidon,  the  maritime 
town,  the  temple  of  Baal-Sidon,  and  the  temple  of  Astarte,  glory  of  Baal,  so  that  in  recom- 
pense of  his  piety,  the  Lord  Adon  Milchon  granted  us  the  towns  of  Dora  and  Japhia,  with 
their  extensive  territories  for  wheat,  which  are  above  Dan,  a  pledge  of  the  possession  of  the 
strong  places  which  I  have  founded,  and  which  he  has  finished  as  bulwarks  of  our  bounda- 
ries endowed  for  the  Sidonians  forever. 

"  By  this  lamentation  I  adjure  every  royal  race  and  every  man,  that  they  will  not  open 
nor  overthrow  the  elevation  of  my  tomb,  that  they  will  not  build  upon  the  construction 
which  covers  this  funeral  bed,  that  they  will  not  remove  my  coffin  from  my  funeral  bed,  in 
fear  lest  the  great  God  should  imprison  them.  Otherwise  may  that  royal  race,  those  sacri- 
legious men  and  their  posterity,  be  destroyed  for  ever !" 

The  inscription  leaves  no  possible  doubt  that  we  have  the  coffin  of 
a  king  of  Sidon  before  us;  and  still,  if  it  had  been  found  without  an 
inscription,  nobody  would  have  doubted  its  Egyptian  origin.105  The 
mummy-shaped  form  of  the  .coffin  is  identical  with  the  basalt-sarco- 
phaguses  of  the  XLXth  dynasty ;  and  the  peculiar  conventional 
beard,  the  head-dress,  the  necklace,  and  the  hawk-beads  of  Horus  on 

disquisitions  connected  with  it. — (Memoire  sur  le  Sarcophage  et  V inscription  funeraire  d'Esmu- 
nazar,  roi  de  Sidon,  par  H.  d' Albert  de  Lutnes,  Paris,  1856,  p.  8,  9.  [Equally  Shemitic 
in  spirit,  is  the  Punic  "sacrificial  ritual"  of  Marseilles,  as  rendered  by  De  Saulcy  (Mem. 
de  I' Acad.  R.  des  Inscrip.,  .1847,  XVII.,  1=  partie.— G.  R.  G.] 

106  [See  "Inscription  Pheniciemie  sur  une  Pierre  a  libation  dn  Se'raphe'ura  de  Memphis," 
by  the  Duo  de  Ldynes,  Bui.  Archeve  de  V Alhenceum  Franco-is,  August-Sept.,  1855. — G.  R.  G.] 


THE     ART    OF     THE     SHEMITES. 


.33 


the  shoulders  of  the  king,  all  completely  correspond  with  the  three 
coffins  of  the  family  of  king  Amasis,  sent  by  Abbas  Pasha  as  a 
present  to  the  Prince  of  Leuchtenberg.     We  are,  therefore,  author- 
Fig.  19. 


EsMUNAZAR. 


ized  to  infer  with  the  Due  de  Luynes  that  Esmunazar  was  a  contem- 
porary of  Amasis.  And  indeed,  we  find  that  Apries  of  Egypt,  about 
B.  c.  574,  invaded  Phoenicia,  captured  Sidon,  and  probably  reduced 
this  very  king  to  a  state  of  dependency  on  Egypt;  which  might 
account  for  the  Egyptian  style  of  king  Esmunazar's  coffin,  unless 
we  can  prove  that  Phoenician  sculpture  was  always  a  daughter  of 
Egyptian  art.  Such  an  assumption  might  be  maintained  by  the  Pha- 
raonic  style  of  the  type  of  some  brass  coins  of  the  island  of  Malta, 
undoubtedly  a  Phoenician  colony.  But  although  the  dress  of  the 
female  head  which  we  distinguish  on  those  coins,  is  evidently  Egyp- 
tian, and  its  ornament  is  the  royal  "Atf," — the  crown  of  Osiris  and 
other  deities,  composed  of  a  conical  cap,  flanked  by  two  ostrich 
feathers  with  a  disk  in  front,  placed  on  the  horns  of  a  goat,  —  still, 
the  reverse  of  the  medal  presents  an  entirely  different  style,  viz :  an 
imitation  of  Assyrian  art.  It  is  a  kneeling  man  with  four  wings. 
But  the  coin  of  Malta  is  not  the  only  instance  of  Assyrian  style  on 
Phoenician  monuments.  Br.  Layard  has  published  several  cylinder 
seals  with  the  Phoenician  name  of  the  proprietor,  engraved  in  Phoeni- 
cian characters.106  The  lion-shaped  weights  in  the  Br.  Museum,  found 
in  the  palace  of  Nimrood,107  bear,  likewise,  Phoenician  inscriptions ; 
but  they  cannot  fairly  be  taken  for  works  of  Shemitic  artists.  They 
prove  only,  by  their  bilingual  inscription,  that  there  were  two  diffe- 
rent nationalities  in  the  empire,  and  that  the  system  of  weights  and 
measures  must  have  been  peculiarly  important  to  the  Shemitic  portion 
of  its  inhabitants — no  other  instances  of  bilingual  official  inscriptions 

100  Layard's  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  606: — Luynes,  Sarcophage,  p.  59. 

107  Layard's  Monuments  of  Nineveh,  1st  series,  pi.  96:  —  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  605. 


134 


THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 


Fig.  20. 


MOABITE. 


having  been  discovered  among  the  remains  of  Assyria.  "We  are 
compelled,  therefore,  to  dismiss  the  idea  that  Phoenician  art  was  a 
development  of  Egyptian  style,  and  must  infer  that  the  Shemites 
borrowed  their  artistical  forms  from  the  neighboring  nations.  Thus, 
the  so-called  Moabite  relief,  from  Redjom  el-Aabed,  published  by 
De  Saulcy,108  is  closely  allied  in  style  to  the  Assyrian  reliefs ;  and  it 

might  be  taken  for  the  work  of 
the  proud  conquerors  of  Palestine, 
were  not  the  type  of  the  face,  and 
the  absence  of  the  characteristi- 
cal  long-flowing  Assyrian  tresses 
rather  Shemitic.  Again,  the 
lost  Scriptural  and  mysteriously- 
engraved  gems  Urim  and  Thum- 
mim,  which  adorned  the  breast- 
plate of  the  Hebrew  high-priest,109 
bear  philologically  such  an  affi- 
nity to  the  Egyptian  Urseus  and 
Thmei,  judicial  symbols  of  power 
and  truth,  that,  as  some  Egyptolo- 
gists have  suggested,  they  might 
Without  laying  too  great  stress 
on  this  suggestion,  which  cannot  be  either  proved  or  disproved,  we 
must  admit,  that  at  the  latest  period  of  the  Hebrew  monarchy,  the 
imagery  of  the  prophets,  —  for  instance,  the  vision  of  Ezekiel,  —  is 
entirely  Assyrian.  The  eagle,  the  winged  lion,  lull  and  man,  which 
finally  became  the  symbols  of  the  four  Evangelists,110  are  now  pretty 
familiar  to  us  by  the  Assyrian  reliefs  of  the  Louvre  and  of  the  British 
Museum.  So  are  the  revolving  winged  orbs  of  the  prophets ;  evidently 
the  same  symbolical  emblems  which,  among  the  Egyptians,  designated 
Hoe-hat,  the  celestial  sun,111  and  were  transferred  to  Nineveh  and 
Persepolis  as  the  symbol  of  the  Feruers  or  Guardian  Angels. 

™Voyage  dans  les  Terres  bibliques,  1853,  Atlas,  pi.  XVIII :  —  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  530. 
109  Lanoi,  La  Sagra  Scrittura  illustrata,  Roma,  1827;    pp.  209-235,  and  Plates:  — Idem, 
Lellre  a  H.Prisse,  pp.  84-5. 

no  [-<<  j;st  vitulus  Lucas,  leo  Marcus,  avisque  Johannes, 
Est  homo  Matthasus,  quatuor  ista  Deus ; 
Est  homo  nascendo,  vitulus  mortem  patiendo, 
Est  leo  snrgendo,  sed  avis  ad  summa  petendo." 
(Sjobekg,  Pa'  Arch'dologisska  Sallskapets  kostnad  och  Forlag,  Stockholm,  1822,  p.  43): — 
Munter.  (Sinnbilder  und  Kunstvorstellung  der  alien  Christen,  Altona,  1825,  p.  25,  pp.  44-5,) 
gives  the  patristic  citations  from  Irenseus,  Augustine,  Jerome,  &c.     "  Rident  autem  Judsei  et 
Arabes,"  adds  old  Gaffakelm. —  G.  R.  G.] 

111  \_Oiia  JSgypliaca,  pp.  95-6  : — Types  of  Mankind,  p.  602.  I  re-allude  to  this  because  I 
find  in  Basnage  (Hist,  of  the  Jews,  p.  248)  that  the  texts  of  Isaiah  and  Malachi  were 
explained  by  the  sun  "with  wings"  as  far  back  as  1701.  — G.  R.  G.] 


have  been  borrowed  from  Egypt. 


THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 


135 


Fig.  21. 


But  the  Phoenicians  had  no  peculiar  predilection  for  the  forms  of 
art  connected  with  the  civilization  of  hieroglyphics,  or  of  the  cunei- 
form character.  Unable  themselves  to  create  a  national  style  of  art, 
they  adopted  Grecian  art  instead.  The  types  of  all  the  coins  of 
Phoenicia  and  Cilicia,  whether  "autonomous"  or  inscribed  with  the 
name  of  the  Persian  Satraps,  are  Greek  as  regards  the  style ;  so  too 
are  the  medals  of  the  Carthaginian  towns  of  Sicily,  vying  in  beauty 
with  the  best  Syracusan  medals.  "Their  elegance,"  according  to 
Gerhard,111  "is  a  proof,  not  of  proficiency,  but  of  the  absence  of 
national  art,  since  there  only  can  a  foreign  style  be  introduced,  where 
it  has  no  national  forms  to  displace."  Even  the  Cypriot-head,  dis- 
covered by  Ross  and  published  by  Gerhard,112  is  in  its  principal  forms 
entirely  Greek,  reminding  us  of  the 
earliest  Hellenic  style ;  and  it  is  therefore 
classed  by  Gerhard  among  the  specimens 
of  archaic  Greek  sculpture,  although 
found  on  an  originally  Phoenician  island, 
because  we  know  of  no  other  instance  of 
a  similar  style  of  Shemitic  art,  at  the 
same  time  that  the  Greek  reliefs  of  Seli- 
nus  are  analogous  to  it. 

The  soil  of  Carthage  and  of  northern 
Africa,  over  which  Punic  domination 
extended,  has  not  yielded  any  monu- 
ments of  Carthaginian  art,  all  such  traces 
of  Punic  civilization  having  been  com- 
pletely swept  away  by  the  Roman  con- 
quest and  its  superimposed  civilization.  Accordingly,  it  is  to  Spain 
and  to  Sardinia  that  we  have  to  look  for  specimens  of  Carthaginian 
art.  But  the  bronze  statuettes  disinterred  from  the  Punic  mounds  of 
Sardinia  {Nuraghe) 113  are  so  barbarous  and  unartistical,  that  we  might 
have  ascribed  them  to  indigenous  tribes,  had  we  not  found  entirely 
analogous  idols  on  some  islands  of  the  Archipelago,114  and  at  Mount 
Lebanon.  David  Urquhart,  M.  P.,  the  well-known  oriental  traveller 
and  diplomatist,  brought  five  such  statuettes  from  among  the 
Maronites,  discovered  during  his  stay  in  Syria,  which  now  enrich 
my  collection  of  antiquities.  Similar  monuments  were  procured 
from  ancient  Tyre  by  the  late  M.  Borel,  French  Consul  at  Smyrna. 


Ctpkiot  Venus. 


111  Uber  die  Kunst  der  Phcenicicr,  Berlin,  1848,  p.  21. 

112  Ibidem,  pi.  VIII.  2,  "  Kyprische  Vemisidole." 

«3  Cf.  De  la  Marmora  (  Voyage  en  Sardaignede  1829  <J  1836,)  for  plates  and  descriptions. 
u*  Gerhard,  loco  citato. 


136 


THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 


"We  publish  some  of  these  bronzes  as  specimens  of  the  original  and 
unadulterated  Sbemitie  art. 

The  first,  in  fig.  22,  is  a  statuette  with  some  Egyptian  touches;  but 

Kg.  22. 


Moloch,  (Pulszky  Coll.) 

the  next,  and  fig.  23,  are  of  progressive  barbarism — all  characterized 
by  the  peculiar  head-dress  in  the  shape  of  a  horn,  the  "  exalted  horn  " 
of  the  Scriptures,  which,  down  to  the  present  day,  has  endured  in  the 
national  ornament  of  the  Druse  females.  The  ugliness  of  these,  no 
less  than  of  the  Sardinian  statuettes, — scarcely  reconcilable  with  com- 
monly received  ideas  about  the  wealth  and  display  of  the  merchant- 
princes  of  Sidon  and  Tyre,  and  the  power  of  Carthage, — ought  not  to 
throw  a  doubt  upon  their  Shemitic  origin;  for,  according  to  Herod- 
otus,115 ugly  and  distorted  representations  were  not  excluded  from 
among  the  Phoenician  forms  of  godhead. 

"5  Hekodotds,  IH.  37. 


THE    ART    OF    THE    SHEMITES. 
Fig.  23. 


137 


Eshmun,  (Puhzhj  Coll.) 

" Winckelman's  guess,"  says  Gerhard,  in  his  often  quoted  essay,  "that  elegance  might 
have  been  the  principal  feature  of  Phoenician  art,  is  not  borne  out  by  the  extant  idols ;  these 
are  rude  and  intended  to  strike  terror,  like  the  idols  of  Mexico.116  ....  All  the  oriental  ele- 
ments in  Greek  and^Etruscan  art,"  he  continues,  "formerly  attributed  to  Phoenician  influ- 
ence, can  be  traced  to  quite  different  countries  of  Asia,  first  to  Candaules  and  Croesus  of 
Lydia,  but  if  we  ascend  to  the  source — to  Babylon  and  Nineveh.  According  to  the  remains 
of  Phoenician  monuments,  the  merit  of  this  nation  must  be  restricted  to  the  clever  use  of 
some  peculiar  materials,  for  instance,  bronze,  gold,  and  ivory,  glass  and  purple ;  and  to 
their  mediating  assistance  afforded  to  the  higher  art  of  inner  Asia,  by  copying  their  forms, 
and  by  carrying  them  to  the  west." 

The  Shemites  being  destitute  of  higher  national  art,  it  is  to  the 
Egyptian  and  Assyrian  monuments  that  we  are  indebted  for  the  pre- 
servation of  the  ancient  Shemitie  cast  of  features,  which  has  remained 
unchanged  for  thirty  and  more  centuries.117  We  could  not  have 
recognized  them  in  the  works  of  their  own  artists,  who  either  imi- 

116  Gerhard,  op.  cil.,  p.  17,  21. 

u'  See  examples  in  Types  of  Mankind,  chapter  iv.  "Physical  History  of  the  Jews." 


138  THE    NATIONS    OF    THE 

tated  the  Egyptians,  Assyrians,  and  Greeks,  or  relapsed  into  com- 
plete barbarism,  but  never  felt  any  inward  impulse  of  their  own  to 
reproduce  nature  in  sculpture  and  painting. 

Our  researches  on  Shemitic  art  clearly  establish  the  fact,  that,  highly 
gifted  races  may  be  unartistic,  and  that  neither  wealth  nor  love  of 
display,  neither  inventive  genius  nor  culture,  can  create  art  among 
them. 


IV. —  THE  NATIONS  OF  THE  CUNEIFORM  "WRITING. 

The  country  lying  east  of  the  homestead  of  the  Shemites, 
embracing  the  plain  of  Mesopotamia,  and  the  bighlands  flanking  the 
Tigris  up  to  the  Persian  desert,  was  in  antiquity  always  the  seat  of 
great  empires, — expanding  principally  towards  the  west,  often  threat- 
ening and  sometimes  subduing  the  Asiatic  coast  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean, and-  extending  its  influence  to  Europe.  The  populations  dwell- 
ing along  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris,  and  on  the  Armenian  and  Per- 
sian table-land — were  not  homogeneous.  Cushite,  Shemitic,  Arian, 
and  Turanian  elements  struggled  here  against  one  another :  the  scep- 
tre of  the  "West  Asiatic  empire  often  changed  hands  amongst  them, 
but  always  within  the  limits  mentioned  above;  being  transferred 
from  Nineveh  to  Babylon,  from  Babylon  to  Ecbatana  and  Persepolis ; 
again  to  Seleucia,  thence  to  Ctesiphon,  and  at  last  to  Bagdad.  The 
national  peculiarities  of  this  empire  have  remained  in  many  respects 
a  puzzle  for  the  ethnologists.  "What  was  the  precise  character  of  the 
languages  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia — what  the  seat  of  the  Scythians 
who  invaded  the  empire,  and  ruled  it  for  twenty-eight  years ;  and 
what  the  national  type  of  the  Medes,  and  perhaps  even  of  the  Par- 
tisans,— are  difficulties  not  yet  solved,  which  require  further  investi- 
gation. 

All  modern  chronologists  and  philologists  agree  about  the  ancient 
Persians,  that  they  were  pure  and  unmixed  Japetides,  or  Indo- 
Europeans ;  so  much  so,  that  the  name  by  which  they  themselves 
called  their  race — Arians  or  Iranians — has  been  adopted  for  designa- 
ting the  peculiar  family  of  the  white  race  to  which  they  belong. 
The  Medes118  and  the  Parthians,  on  the  other  side,  are  classed  among 
the  Turanians,  or  Scythians,  or  Turk-Tartars.  As  to  the  Assyrians 
and  Babylonians,  the  following  is  the  result  of  the  latest  researches : 

The  Chevalier  Bunsen, — whose  eminently  suggestive  works  will 
remain  of  the  highest  value,  even  when  a  more  thorough  knowledge 
of  the  subjects  he  treats  may  have  modified  many  of  his  hypotheses 

118  According  to  Stkabo,  the  difference  of  the  Mede  and  Persian  languages  was  a  dif- 
ference of  mere  dialect:   still,  our  scholars  unanimously  designate  the  Scythian  (or  Tura-" 
nian),  second  inscription  of  Behistun,  by  the  word  Median. 


CUNEIFORM    WRITING.  139 

and  conclusions ;  Max  Muller,  the  well-known  Sanscrit  scholar ; 
and  Lepsius,  the  celebrated  Egyptologist;  are  the  foremost  of  a 
school  which  tries  to  find  out  a  union  between  the  Shemitic  and  the 
Arian  races,  and  to  derive  all  the  languages  of  Europe  and  of  Asia 
from  one  common  original  stock.  According  to  their  theory,  the 
languages  of  the  old  world  may  be  classed  into  four  distinct  families : 
Hamitic  or  Cushite,  Shemitic,  Turanian  (including  the  Chinese,  the 
Turk-Tartars  and  Malays,)  and  Arian.  Proceeding  farther,  they 
assert  that  the  Hamitic  is  but  an  earlier  form  of  the  Shemitic,  whilst 
the  Arian  is  for  them  nothing  more  than  the  development  of  the 
Turanian.  Having  reduced  the  four  families  to  two,  they  seek  a 
union  between  the  Shemitic  and  Arian,  and  believe  they  have 
found  the  traces  of  this  original  unity,  first  in  the  ancient  Egyptian, 
and  again  in  the  Babylonian  and  Assyrian.119 

However,  these  conclusions  are  rather  speculative  hypotheses  than 
acquired  scientific  facts.  Lepsius  acknowledges  that  the  Coptic 
forms  a  branch  as  distinct  and  as  distant  from  the  Shemitic,  as  the  She- 
mitic is  from  the  Arian ;  whilst  Bunsen  and  Max  Muller  admit  the 
same,  by  placing  that  which  they  call  the  sacred  language  of  Assyria 
and  Babylonia  "  between  Hamitism,  or  the  ante-historical  Shemitism 
in  Egypt,  and  the  historical  Shemitic  languages;"120  and  again,  by 
stating  that  "the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Babylon  exhibit  to  us  a 
language  in  the  transition  from  primordial  to  historical  Shemi- 
tism." 121 

Renan,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot  imagine  how  any  Shemitic 
language  could  have  been  written  in  a  non-Shemitic  alphabet : 

"In  early  antiquity,  language  and  alphabet  are  inseparable:  the  cuneiform  characters 
may  have  been  adopted  by  nations  having  no  alphabet  of  their  own ;  but  how  should  the 
imperfect,  ideographic,  system  of  Assyria  and  Babylon  have  served  for  writing  languages 
which  had  a  more  developed  system  of  writing  of  their  own  ?" 

Besides,  according  to  him,  the  national  history  of  the  Assyrians 
and  Babylonians  has  no  Shemitic  characters. 

"Shemitic  life  is  simple  and  narrow,  patriarchal,  and  hostile  to  centralization.  The 
Shemite  disUkes  manual  labor,  and  the  patience'  and  discipline — such  as  raised  gigantic 
structures  like  those  of  Egypt  and  Assyria, — are  wanting  with  him.  At  Nineveh,  on  the 
contrary,  we  meet  with  a  great  development  of  material  civilization,  with  an  absolute 
monarchy,  with  nourishing  imitative  art,  with  a  grand  style  of  architecture,  with  a  mytho- 
logy impregnated  with  Arian  ideas,  with  a  tendency  to  see  an  incarnation  of  Godhead  in 
the  king,  and  with  a  spirit  of  conquest  and  centralization." 

119  Bcnsen  and  Max  MBxlek,  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  History : — Lepsius,  1st,  Anord- 
nung  und  Verwandlschaft  des  Semilischen,  Indischen,  Altpersischen  und  Allcethiopischen  Alpha- 
betes;  and  lid,   XTrsprung  und  Verwandlschaft  der  Zahlworter. 

120  Sippolylus,  III,  p.  183,  seqq. :  —  Outlines,  I,  p.  183,  seqq. 
la  Livre  I,  Chap.  II.  <S  3,  4. 


140  THE    NATIONS    OF    THE 

The  Chaldeans  of  Babylonia,  with  their  magnificent  robes,  riding 
on  high-spirited  horses,  and  wearing  high  tiaras,  as  described  by 
Ezekiel,122  are  therefore,  for  B,enan,  not  Shemites,  but  a  branch  of 
the  ruling  race  of  Assyria;  which,  according  to  him,  was  Arian. 
As  to  the  names  of  the  kings :  Tiglath-Pilesar,  Sennacherib,  Sargon, 
Evil-Merodach,  Markodempal,  &c. — they  are  contrary  to  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  the  Syro-Arabic  languages,  and  cannot  be  reduced  to 
Sbemitic  roots.  But  again,  most  of  the  towns  and  rivers  in  Assyria 
and  Babylonia  have  Shemitic  names;  whence  he  infers  that  the 
bulk  of  the  population  in  Mesopotamia  must  have  been  Shemitic, 
but  subject  to  a  conquering  race  of  Arians,  which  formed  a  military 
aristocracy  and  a  religious  caste,  both  summed  up  in  the  person  of 
the  absolute  king. 

We  cannot  but  admit  the  force  of  Benan's  reasoning ;  and  his  con- 
clusion about  the  two  nationalities  in  Assyria  and  Babylonia123  (that 
is  to  say,  about  the  Shemitic  character  of  the  bulk  of  the  people  with 
a  ruling  race  of  Iranians),  is  supported  by  the  Shemitic  and  bilingual 
inscriptions  on  some  Assyrian  monuments  already  noticed.  This 
view  of  a  mixed  population  inhabiting  Mesopotamia,  sufficiently  ex- 
plains the  semi-Shemitic  peculiarities  of  the  languages  of  the  cunei- 
form inscriptions  on  the  monuments  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon :  and 
the  reasoning  of  the  learned  author  of  "  the  Genesis  of  the  Earth 
and  of  Man,"  leads  to  the  same  result  when  he  observes, — "  a  mixed 
language  obtaining  in  one  country  indicates  a  mixture  of  races ;  and 
the  grammar  of  that  language,  by  its  being  unmixed  or  mixed,  is  an 
index  to  the  number  and  power  of  one  race  in  comparison  with  the 
other  at  the  period  of  the  formation  of  the  mixed  language."124  Ac- 
cording to  this  rule,  the  Assyrian  aud  Babylonian,  instead  of  forming 
the  "transition  between  ante-historical  and  historical  Shemitism," 
must  be  considered  as  the  result  of  the  mixture  of  Shemitic  and 
Arian  elements,  at  any  rate  not  anterior  to  historical  Shemitism. 
The  monuments  of  art  discovered  in  Assyria  and  Babylonia  lead  to 
the  same  conclusion,  viz  :  that  the  ruling  classes  were  Arian,  since  all 
the  sculptures  connected  with  cuneiform  inscriptions  bear  the  same 
Arian  character  at  Nineveh  as  well  as  at  Persepolis.  In  fact,  the 
civilization  and  the  fundamental  ideas  about  political  government 
and  provincial  administration  are  identical  among  all  the  nations 
making  use  of  the  cuneiform  character,  though  we  must  admit  dif- 

122  Chapter  XXIII. 

123  Gesenius  had,  long  before  Kenan,  insisted  upon  the  northern  origin  of  the  Chaldeans 
as  a  conquering  raoe  in  Babylonia,  different  from  the  bulk  of  the  population. 

124  Edited  by  R.  Stewart  Poole,  Edinburgh,  1856,  p.  155:  —  compare  Types  of  Mankind, 
1854,  voce  "  Elam,"  pp.  533-4. 


CUNEIFORM    WRITING.  141 

ferent  degrees  of  development.  The  Babylonian  inscriptions  abound 
with  ideographic  groups  reminding  us  of  the  hieroglyphics  of  Egypt, 
whilst  the  Arians  of  Persia  borrowed  the  phonetic  system  from  the 
Shemites,  but  retained  the  form  of  the  wedge.  As  to  their  artistic 
capacities,  the  Assyrians  occupy  the  highest  rank,  in  some  of  the  bas- 
reliefs  of  Sardanapalus  second  only  to  the  Greeks.  Some  of  the  Per- 
sepolitan  seals  are  likewise  of  a  high,  chaste,  and  sober  style  of  art,  ■ 
peculiarly  charming  by  the  introduction  of  picturesque  folds  into  the 
heavy  Assyrian  garments.  The  Babylonians,  with  whom  tbe  Shemi- 
tic  element  always  preponderated,  were  little  artistic ;  inscriptions 
were  more  copious  with  them  than  reliefs,  and  their  sculptures  are 
without  exception  rude  in  execution,  and  monotonous  in  conception. 
It  is  difficult  to  speak  about  the  origin  or  the  early  history  of 
Assyrian  art.  The  earliest  mention  of  the  empire  occurs  in  the 
hieroglyphic  annals  of  Thutmosis  HE,  the  great  conquering  Pharaoh 
of  the  XVIIth  dynasty,  about  the  seventeenth  century,  b.  c,  who 
caused  his  victories  to  be  recorded  on  a  slab  deciphered  by  Mr. 
Birch.135  "We  hear  of  the  defeat  of  the  king  of  Naharaina  (Mesopo- 
tamia) ;  or  of  the  chief  of  Saenhar,  (Shinar)  bringing  as  tribute  blue- 
stone  of  Babilu,  (lapis-lazuli  from  Babylon).  Under  Amenophis  m, 
we  find  Asuru,  Naharaina  and  Saenhar,  again  among  the  conquered 
countries.126  And,  as  corroborative  of  the  truth  of  the  hieroglyphical 
records,  Egyptian  scarabs  with  the  engraved  names  of  these  two 
kings  have  been  found  in  various  parts  of  Mesopotamia.127  At  a 
somewhat  later  period,  under  the  XXth  dynasty  of  the  Ramessides, 
the  chief  of  Bakhtan  12B  offers  his  daughter  to  Ramesses  XIV,  who 
marries  her ;  and  soon  after,  about  the  time  when  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant  was  taken  from  the  Israelites  by  the  Philistines,  sent  the 
Ark  of  the  Egyptian  God,  Khons,  from  Thebes  to  Bashan,  as  a  remedy 
to  his  sister-in-law,  who  was  possessed  by  an  evil  spirit.129  The 
intercourse  between  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia  became  soon  still  more 
close  and  intimate.130  We  find  Pharaoh  Pihem,  the  head  of  the  XXIst 
dynasty,  journeying  on  a  friendly  visit  to  Mesopotamia : m  moreover, 
his  successors  and  their  descendants, — to  judge  by  their  names, — 

125  Bikch,  The  Annals  of  Thotmes  III,  vol.  v.  of  the  Transactions  of  the  Roy,  Soo. 
Liter.  — New  series,  p.  116. 

126  Lepshjs,  Lenkmaler  III.  Bl.  88. 

127  Layard,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  281 :  —  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  133,  fig.  32. 

128  Egyptologists  identify  Bakhtan  with  the  scriptural  Bashan  "in  upper  Mesopotamia," 
as  they  call  it,  though  it  is  rather  hold  to  call  Mesopotamia  the  country  bordering  on  the 
tribe  of  Manasseh.  —  In  consequence,  some  favor  Ecbatana. 

129  Birch,  Transactions  R.  Soc.  Lit.  IV.  p.  16  &  f. 
«°  Lepsius,  Denkmaler  III,  Bl.  249. 

"»  Birch,  Transactions  R.  Soc.  Lit.  1848,  p.  164  &  f. 


142  THE    NATIONS    OF    THE 

are  connected  with  Mesopotamia;  inasmuch  as  the  names  of  Osor- 
kon,  (Sargon)  Takeloth  (Tiglath),  Nimrod,  and  Keromama  [Semi- 
ramis,)  are  altogether  un-Egyptian,  and  strongly  Assyrian.  About 
this  time  (9th  and  10th  century  b.  c.)  ivory  combs,  and  decorative 
sculptures  of  Assyrian  design  became  fashionable  in  Egypt,133  and 
show  that  the  Assyrian  style  of  art  was  already  fully  developed.  The 
celebrated  black  marble  obelisk  of  king  Divanubar  (Deleboras  ?),  in 
the  British  Museum,  belongs  to  about  the  same  period,  being 
synchronic  with  king  Jehu  of  Israel  (about  820  b.  c),  and  bears  no 
peculiar  traces  of  archaism.  The  archaic  human-headed  bull  and 
lion  of  Arban,  published  by  Layard,133  must  therefore  be  placed  by 
several  centuries  before  the  obelisk,  and  may  perhaps  belong  to  the 
time  of  the  first  contact  of  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt  under  the  con- 
quering kings  of  the  XVTIth  and  XVHTth  dynasties. 

"  Their  outline  and  treatment,"  says  Layard,  "  are  bold  and  angular,  with  an  archaic  feel- 
ing conveying  the  impression  of  great  antiquity.  They  bear  the  same  relation  to  the  more 
delicately  finished  and  highly  ornamented  sculptures  of  Nimroud  as  the  earliest  specimens 
of  Greek  art  do  to  the  exquisite  monuments  of  Phidias  and  Praxiteles.  The  human 
features  are,  unfortunately,  much  injured,  but  such  parts  as  remain  are  sufficient  to  show 
that  the  countenance  had  a  peculiar  character,  differing  from  the  Assyrian  type.  The  nose 
was  flat  and  large,  and  the  lips  thick  and  overhanging,  like  those  of  a  negro." 

To  judge  by  the  drawing  of  Dr.  Layard,  knowing  the  correctness 
of  his  designs,  we  must  observe  that  the  head  of  the  Arban  bull  has 
as  little  of  nigritian  characters  as  the  head  of  the  colossal  sphinx134 
before  the  second  Pyramid ;  which  had  formerly  likewise  often  been 
compared  to  a  Negro,  exclusively  on  account  of  the  fulness  of  the 
lips,  and  the  defacement  of  its  nose  by  Arab  iconoclasts.135  The  face, 
however,  on  both  these  monuments,  has  no  particular  projection  of 

132  De  Rouge',  Notice,  p.  16:  — established  also  by  Birch,  "On  two  Egyptian  cartouches 
found  at  Nimroud,"  1848,  pp.  153-60 ;  abundantly  figured  in  Layard's  folio  Monuments  of 
Nineveh,  1849. 

133  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  p.  276  &  f. 

134  [Since  the  studies  of  Lenormant  (Musee  des  Antiquites  E~gyptiennes,  p.  44),  and  of 
Letronne  (Recueil  des  Inscriptions  Grecques  el  Latines,  II,  1848,  pp.  460-86),  the  epoch  here- 
tofore attributed  to  the  Great  Sphinx,  viz :  to  Amosis  (Aahmes)  of  XVIIth  dynasty,  has  also 
been  carried  to  the  more  ancient  period  of  the  Old  Empire,  through  the  successive  explora- 
tions of  Lepsius  (Briefe,  1852,  pp.  42-5),  Brugsch  (Reiseberichte,  1855,  pp.  10-34),  and 
more  than  all  by  Mariette,  who  re-uncovered  this  rock-colossus  in  1853.  The  enigma  of 
the  "  Sphinx,"  through  the  latter's  researches,  has  vanished  likewise !  It  is  but  "Horus  of 
the  horizon,"  i.  e.  the  setting  sun.  (De  Saulct,  "  Fouilles  du  Serapeum  de  Memphis,"  Le 
Conslitulionel,  Paris,  9  Dec.  1854: — Maury,  Decouvertes  en  Sgyple,  p.  1074)  —  G.  R.  G.] 

135  [Makreezee  narrates  how  the  nose  of  the  Sphinx  was  chiselled  away  by  a  fanatical 
muslim  saint,  about  1378:  —  Cf.  Fialin  de  Persigny,  then  "de'tenu  a  la  maison  de  saute" 
de  Doulens,"  [De  la  Destination  et  de  T  Utilite"  permanente  des  Pyramides  de  l'E~gypte  et  de  la 
Nubie  conlre  les  Irruptions  Sablonneuses  du  Disert,  Paris,  8vo.  1845).  —  G.  R.  G.] 


CUNEIFORM    WRITING.  143 

the  jaws,  and  the  facial  angle  is  open.  The  fulness  of  the  lips  pecu- 
liar to  the  Egyptian,  or  negroid  type,  reminds  the  man  of  science  only 
of  Egypt,  not  of  negroes ;  who,  in  spite  of  Count  de  Gobineau's  inge- 
nious hypotheses,136  could  not  have  been  the  ancestors  of  the  Arian 
monarchs  of  Mesopotamia.  Though  all  the  human-headed  hulls  of 
Assyria  are  royal  portraits,  just  as  sphinxes  of  Egypt  were  likenesses 
of  the  Pharaohs,137  still,  we  are  scarcely  authorized  to  draw  any  con- 
clusion about  an  Egyptian  origin  of  Assyrian  art  from  the  negroid 
(perhaps  Arab-Cushite)  cast  of  features  of  the  Arban  king:  for,  in  all 
other  respects,  the  colossus  exhibits  the  marked  characteristics  of 
Assyrian  art ;  for  instance,  in  the  elaborate  arrangement  of  the  curls 
and  beard,  the  architectural  peculiarity  of  the  five  feet  of  the  bull, 
instead  of  four,  together  with  the  exaggeration  of  the  muscles. 
Assyrian  art,  in  its  earliest  known  remains,  appears  entirely  national 
and  independent  of  Egypt ;  and  it  maintains  its  peculiar  type  through 
the  vicissitudes  of  several  centuries  down  to  the  destruction  of  the 
empire.  "We  do  not  mean  to  say  that  Egypt  exerted  no  influence 
whatever  on  Assyria;  on  the  contrary,  there  are  some  bronze 
cups  and  ivory  ornaments  and  statuettes,  in  the  British  Museum, 
evidently  imitated  from  Egyptian  models;  still,  the  Egyptian  ex- 
erted but  a  temporary  influence  on  the  decorative  element  of  the 
Assyrian  style,  without  modifying  the  art  of  Assyria,  which  can  best 
be  designated  by  the  epithet  of  "princely."  The  king,  according  to 
the  reliefs,  sums  up  the  whole  national  life  of  Nineveh.  Wherever 
we  look,  we  meet  exclusively  with  his  representations,  surrounded 
here  with  his  court,  there  with  his  army,  receiving  tribute  and  con- 
cluding treaties,  leading  his  troops  and  fighting  battles,  besieging 
fortresses  and  punishing  the  prisoners,  hunting  the  wild  bull  and  the 
lion  of  the  desert,  feasting  in  his  royal  halls  and  drinking  wine  from 
costly  cups.  Even  the  pantheon  of  Assyria  is  mostly  known  by  the 
worship,  oblations,  and  sacrifices  of  the  king.  The  scenes  of  domes- 
tic life,  and  of  the  sports  and  occupations  of  the  people,  which,  in 
Egyptian  reliefs,  occupy  nearly  as  much  place  as  the  representations 
connected  with  royalty,  are  altogether  wanting  at  Nineveh.  There 
are  a  few  slabs  that  represent  domestic  occupations — a  servant  curry- 
combing  a  horse,  a  cook  superintending  the  boilers,  and  the  butchers 

136  De  Gobineau,  in  his  Inegalite  des  races  humaines,  attributes  the  artistic  faculties  of  any 
race  to  an  admixture  of  Negro  or  Mongol  blood,  although  he  acknowledges  that  pure  Negroes 
are  unartistic. 

137  The  union  of  a  human  head  to  a  lion  in  Egypt,  and  to  a  bull  in  Assyria,  implies  an 
apotheosis :  since  the  lion  and  the  bull  were  the  symbols  of  Gods,  the  terrestrial  images  of 
celestial  beings. 


144  THE    NATIONS    OF    THE 

disjointing  a  calf;138  but  all  this  is  done  before  tbe  tent  of  tbe  king: 
it  is  tbe  royal  stable  and  tbe  royal  kitchen  which  we  see  before  us, — in 
fact,  "  court-life  below  stairs."  The  rich  Asiatic  costume  of  the 
Assyrians,  wide  and  flowing,  decorated  with  embroidery,  fringes  and 
tassels,  contrasts  most  strikingly  with  the  prevalent  nakedness  of 
Egyptian  and  Greek  art.  We  are  always  reminded  of  the  pomp,  splen- 
dor and  etiquette  of  eastern  courts.  The  proportions  of  the  human 
body  are  somewhat  short  and  heavy,  less  animated  in  their  action,  but 
more  correctly  modelled  than  in  Egyptian  reliefs.  Nothing  but  an 
occasional  want  of  correctness  about  the  shoulders  and  the  eyes, 
which,  in  the  bas-reliefs,  are  drawn  in  the  front-view,  reminds  us  of  the 
infancy  of  art  or  of  a  traditionary  hieratic  style.  The  anatomical 
knowledge,  however,  with  which  the  muscles  are  sculptured,  even 
where  the  execution  is  rather  coarse,  surpasses  the  art  of  Egypt  in 
the  time  of  the  XVIIth  dynasty.  The  composition  is  generally 
clear,  the  space  conveniently  and  symmetrically  filled  with  figures, 
and  the  relief,  to  a  certain  degree,  has  ceased  to  be  a  mere  architec- 
tural decoration :  on  the  palace  of  Essarhaddon,  it  has  even  become 
a  real  tableau.  For  all  this,  we  cannot  appreciate  the  merit  of  the 
sculptures,  if  we  pass  our  judgment  upon  them  independently  of  the 
place  for  which  they  were  originally  destined.  Accordingly,  the 
peculiarly  Assyrian  exaggeration  in  representing  the  muscles  of  the 
body  has  often  been  criticized ; 139  since  it  escaped  the  attention  of  our 
modern  art-critics,  that  this  fault  is  only  apparent,  not  real,  being 
produced  exclusively  by  the  different  way  in  which  the  bas-reliefs 
were  lit  in  antiquity  and  modern  times.  In  the  hot  climate  and 
under  the  glaring  sun  of  Mesopotamia,  the  palaces  were  built  prin- 
cipally with  the  view  to  afford  coolness  and  shade ;  and  therefore  all 
the  royal  halls  were  long,  high  and  narrow,  in  order  to  exclude  the 
rays  of  the  sun.  They  could,  in  consequence,  but  very  imperfectly 
have  been  lighted  from  above,  through  apertures  in  the  colonnade 
supporting  the  beams  of  the  roof.  A  cool  chiaroscuro  reigned  in  all 
the  apartments ;  and  unless  the  reliefs  on  the  wall  were  intended 
altogether  to  be  lost  to  beholders,  it  was  indispensable  to  have  the 
principal  lines  deeply  cut  into  the  alabaster,  in  order  to  produce  a 
sufficiently-intense  shadow  for  making  the  composition  and  its  details 
apparent.  The  Assyrian  sculptors,  with  true  artistical  feeling,  cal- 
culated upon  the  effect  their  works  were"  to  make  in  the  king's 
palaces ;  but  could  not  dream  that  their  compositions  were  to  be 

188  Bonomi,  Nineveh  and  Us  Palaces,  p.  228-29 ;  an  octavo  which  admirably  popularizes  tho 
costly  folios  of  Botta  and  Flandin's  Ninive. 
139  Bonomi,  Nineveh  and  its  Palaces,  p.  315. 


CUNEIFORM     WRITING. 


145 


exposed,  28  centuries  later,  to  the  close  inspection  of  the  critics  of  our 
day  in  well-lighted  museums. 

When  we  claim  a  peculiar  national  type  for  Assyrian  art,  alto- 
gether independent  of  Egyptian,  we  do  not  mean  to  deny  accidental 
Egyptian  influence,  which,  however,  could  not  transform  Assyrian 
sculpture  into  a  branch  of  Nilotic  art.  The  beautiful  embossed 
bronze  bowls,  ivory  bas-reliefs  and  statuettes  found  at  Mneveh,  are 
certainly  imitations  of  Egyptian  models ;  but  we  encounter  similar 
artistical  fashions  at  Rome  in  the  time  of  Hadrian.  They  remained 
altogether  on  the  surface,  and  did  not  affect  the  national  style.  Still, 
we  do  find  some  artistic  "motives,"  even  on  the  best  reliefs  of  Nim- 
rood  and  Khorsabad,  which  show  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  Assyrian 
sculptors  were  acquainted  with  some  Egyptian  monuments  of  art ; 
and  on  the  other,  that  this  acquaintance  ever  continued  to  be  super- 
ficial. Thus,  for  instance,  we  often  meet  on  Pharaonic  battle-scenes, 
with  the  vulture,  holding  a  sword  in  its  claws,  soaring  above  tbe  king, 
as  a  symbol  of  victory.  The  Mnevite  artists  copied  this  representa- 
tion, but,  unacquainted  with  its  hieratic  symbolical  meaning,  sculp- 
tured the  vulture  simply  as  the  hideous  bird  of  prey,  feeding  upon  the 
corpses  on  the  battle-field,  and  carrying  the  limbs  into  its  eyrie.  In 
a  similar  way,  the  winged  solar  disc,  the  symbol  of  the  heavenly  sun, 
was  transformed  in  Assyria  into  the  guardian-angel  of  the  king  him- 
self, and  transferred  at  a  later  age  to  Persia  as  tbe  Feruer. 

The  following  representation  of 
an  Assyrian  [24]  gives    us    a   fair  Fl£-  24- 

idea  of  the  Arian  type  of' the  ISfine- 
vite  aristocracy.  It  is  the  head 
of  a  statue  of  the  God  Nebo,  in  the 
British  Museum,  bearing  across  its 
breast  an  inscription,  stating  that 
the  statue  was  executed  by  a  sculp- 
tor of  Calah,  and  dedicated  by  him 
to  his  lord  Phalukha,  (Belochus, 
Pul,)  king  of  Assyria,  and  to  his 
lady  Sammuramit  (Semiramis)  queen 
of  the  palace  (about  750  b.  a). 

The  same  general  cast  of  features 
is  clearly  discernible  in  an  inedited 
portrait  of  Essareadbon  [25]  (about 
660  b.  c.)  taken  from  the  great  tri- 
umphal tableau  at  Kouyundjik,  Nebo- 
now  in  the  British  Museum.     The 

Ninevite  artists, — who,  about  the  time  of  this  king,  introduced  a 
10 


146 


THE    NATIONS    OF    THE 


new  feature  into  relievos  by  trying  to  combine  landscape  and  natural 

objects  with  tbe  great  bistorical 
compositions,  —  were  perfectly 
aware  of  tbe  differences  in  tbe 
national  types  also.  Tbe  two  pri- 
soners at  tbe  feet  of  king  Assar- 
akbal  m,  are  evidently  not  Assy- 
rians, one  of  tbem  [26]  being  a 
Sbemite,  tbe  otber  [27]  an  inha- 
bitant of  tbe  table-lands  of  Arme- 
nia, if  not  a  Kurd.  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson  deems  tbem  Susians. 
Still  nobler  than  Essarhaddon 
is  tbe  Sardanapalus  [28]  (635  b. 
c.)  of  tbe  British  Museum,  a  truly 
magnificent  prince,  tbe  father  of 
tbe  king  under  whom  Mneveh 
was  destroyed,  and  who,  in  the 
Greek  histories,  is  mentioned 
under  the  same  name.  His 
Essarhaddon.  monuments,    lately    discovered, 


Fig.  26. 


Fig.  27. 


Shemite  Prisoner,  (Inedited). 


Kurdish  Prisoner,  {Inedited). 


and  brought  to  England  by  Mr.  Rassam,  are  so  exquisitely  modelled, 
and  executed  with  such  a  highly-developed  sense  of  beauty, 
that  we  must  rank  them  among  the  best  relics  of  ancient  art.  The 
peculiar  hair-dress  of  the  king  seems  to  have  served  as  a  model  to 
the  Lycian  sculptor  of  the  Harpy  monument  of  Xanthus,  in  the 
Br.  M. ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  tbe  female  bead  [29]  of  an  archaic 
coin  of  Velia,  in  Italy,  shows  the  same  arrangement  of  tbe  hair.  Velia 
was  a  colony  from  Phocsea,  in  Ionia,  whose  high-minded  citizens 
preferred  abandoning  their  country,  rather  than  to  live  under  the 


CUNEIFORM    WRITING.  147 

sway  of  the   conqueror   Croesus.     They  carried  the  traditions  of 

Fig.  28.  Fig.  29. 


Silver  Coin  from  Velia,  {Pulszky  coll.) 

Asiatic  art  into  Italy,  at  a  time 
when  Hellas  could  not  yet 
boast  of  eminence  in  sculpture. 
But  although  the  hair-dress 
of  the  Velian  female  closely 
resembles  and  may  be  traced 
Sardanapams.  back  to  Assyrian  models,  which 

are  about  two  centuries  older, 
still  the  cast  of  the  features  is  not  the  same.  It  is,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, thoroughly  Greek.  "Whilst,  as  a  remarkable  instance  of  the 
constancy  of  national  types,  the  likeness  between  the  modern  Chal- 
deans (JSTestorians)  and  the  old  Assyrians  is  unmistakable.  To  illus- 
trate this  properly,  we  give,  side  by  side,  sketches  of  a  Chaldean  mer- 
chant of  Mosul,  and  a  head  from  one  of  the  Nineveh  sculptures.140 


Fig.  30. 


Fig.  31. 


Modern  Chaldee.  Ancient  Assyrian. 

Babylon,  of  whose  art  but  few  remains  have  as  yet  been  dis- 


140  Illustrated  London  News,  May  24,  1856. 


148 


THE     NATIONS    OF     THE 


covered, — mostly  cylindrical  seals  of  lapis-lazuli  and  haematite,  and 
some  terra-cottas — was  less  artistical  than  Nineveh.  Its  statuary  was 
a  branch  of  the  Assyrian,  not  differing  in  style,  hut  only  in  perfec- 
tion. All  the  Babylonian  monuments,  without  exception,  are  evi- 
dences of  the  more  Shemitic  character  of  the  country ;  whither  art 
has  been  imported  from  Nineveh,  without  ever  becoming  thoroughly 
understood. 

A  nobler  spirit  prevailed  in  Arian  Persia.     The  royal  palaces  and 

tombs    of   the    Achsemenian 
Fig.  32.  kings   yield  numerous  speci- 

mens of  Persian  art,  mostly 
belonging  to  the  great  time 
of  Persia  under  Darius  Hys- 
taspes  and  his  son  Xerxes. 
Nevertheless,  one  monument, 
which  shows  the  origin  of 
art  under  the  Achsemenidse, 
has  likewise  escaped  the  ra- 
vages of  time,  and  is  proba- 
bly the  earliest  of  all  the 
Persian  reliefs.  "We  speak  of 
the  rock-sculpture  at  Mur- 
ghab,  close  to  Persepolis,  re- 
presenting a  man  with  four 
wings,  clad  in  the  long  As- 
syrian robe  without  folds,  and 
bearing  on  his  head  the  Egyp- 
tian crown  called  "Atf,"  which 
is  the  peculiar  distinction  of  the 
God  Ohnum.  The  cuneiform 
inscription,  above  the  sculp- 
ture, says,  with  grandeur  and 
simplicity:  "I  am  Cyrus,  the 
king;  the  Achsemenian."[S2] 
This  monument  was  evi- 
dently, then,  erected  in  honour  of  Cyrus,  but  it  cannot  have  been 
sculptured  in  the  life-time  of  the  conqueror,  inasmuch  as  his  wings 
(which  are  the  Assyrian  attributes  of  Godhead),  and  the  crown  of 
Chnum  (which  is  the  Egyptian  symbol  of  divine  power),  clearly  indi- 
cate an  apotheosis.  The  peculiarity  of  the  costume  of  Cyrus,  which 
is  purely  Assyrian,  without  folds,  forbids  us  to  place  the  sculpture 
in  the  time  of  Darius  or  his  descendants ;  whose  monuments,  with- 


141  Vaux,  Nineveh  and  Persepolis,  4th  ed.,  London,  1855 ;  Plate,  pp   392-3. 


CUNEIFORM    WRITING. 


149 


out  exception,  are  characterized  by  the  Persian  folds  of  the  gar- 
ment. 

Thus,  then,  the  relief  of  Murghab  must  be  the  work  of  Cam- 
btses,  who,  according  to  Diodorus  Siculus,142  employed  Egyptian 
artists,  and  was  probably  the  first  to  introduce  art  into  Persia.  Ac- 
cording to  the  rock-sculpture,  bowever,  be  did  not  confine  himself 
to  Egyptians,  but  transplanted  sculptors  likewise  from  Babylonia  and 
Assyria  to  Pasargadss,  and  dedicated  their  first  work  to  the  lasting 
memory  of  his  illustrious  father  (about  580  b.  c).  Thus,  we  may 
safely  state  that  Persian  art  is  a  daughter  of  the  Assyrian,  a  little 
modified  by  Egyptian  influences,  but  soon  emancipating  itself  from 
its  early  traditions  by  a  purely  national  development,  characterized 
by  the  very  high  elegance  of  the  drapery '.  Bonomi143  takes  the 
Persian  style,  wrongly, for  a  deterioration  of  Assyrian  art;  but  his 
mistake  is  easily  explained,  since  he  formed  his  judgment  upon  some 
fragments  of  a  later  period,  which  are  now  in  the  British  Museum, 
and  upon  the  drawings  of  Ker  Porter  and  Gore  Ouseley.  The  Perse 
of  Flandin,  and  the  Armenie  of  Texier,  seem  to  have  escaped  bis 
attention.  They  are  the  only  ones,  notwithstanding,  wbicb  do  full 
justice  to  the  refined  taste  and  the  neat  execution  of  the  sculptures 
of  Persepolis.  In  comparison  with  the  Assyrian  Monuments  of 
Sargon  and  Essarhaddon,  they  take  the  same  place,  as,  in  Egypt, 
does  the  elegant  style  of  Psammeticus  contrasted  with  the  grandeur 
of  the  statues  of  the  Amenophs  and  Thutmoses.  We  must,  however, 
acknowledge  that  they  are  inferior  to  the  reliefs  of  Sardanapalus. 
Although  the  head  of  Cyrus  (as  shown  by  the  more  accurate  copy  of 
Texier144  [33]  here  presented,) 
at  Murghab,  is  somewhat 
damaged  about  the  nose,  it 
is  sufficiently  characteristic 
to  show  its  pure  Arian  type. 
The  portrait  of  Xerxes,145  [34] 
is  a  fine  specimen  of  the  so- 
termed  Greek  profile,  which 
we  ought  to  call  pure  Arian. 
The  Achssmenidan  sculptors 
moreover,  were  very  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  peculiar 
Cyrus.  character  of  the  different  na- 


Fig.  34 


Xerxes. 


142  Libra  1,  capite  46. 

1*3  Nineveh  and  its  Palaces,  p.  315. 

144  L' Armenie,  la  Perse,  el  la  Mesopotamie,  II.,  pi.  84 — "Bas-relief  a  Mourgab,  Cyrus." 

145  Coste  and  Flandin,  Perse  Ancienne,  pi.  154;  but  compare  the  more  beautiful  copy  in 
Texier's  Armenie. 


150 


THE    NATIONS    OF    THE 


tional  types  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Persian  empire ;  as  we  see 
plainly  on  the  reliefs  of  the  tomb  of  king  Darius  Hystaspes,  which 
he  had  excavated  in  the  mountain  Rachmend,  near  Persepolis.  The 
king  is  represented  here  in  royal  attire  before  the  fire-altar,  over 
which  hovers  his  guardian  angel,  in  the  form  of  a  human  half-figure 
rising  from  a  winged  disc.  This  group,  grand  in  its  simplicity,  is 
placed  on  a  beautifully  decorated  platform,  supported  by  two  rows 
of  Caryatides,  sixteen  in  each  row,  representing  the  four  different 
nationalities  subject  to  this  king, — besides  the  ruling  Persians,  who 
occupy  a  more  distinguished  position,  flanking  the  composition  on 
both  sides,  and  typified  by  three  spearsmen  of  the  royal  guard,  and 
by  three  courtiers  who  raise  their  hands  in  adoration. 

This  relief  of  the  sepulchre  of  Darius  in  Persia,  is  one  of  the  most 
valuable  documents  of  ethnology,  second  in  importance  only  to  king 
Menephthah's  (Seti  I.)  celebrated  tomb  at  Thebes  recording  four 
types  of  man.146    "We  see  here  first  the  sculpture  of  a  Chaldean,  stand- 


Fig.  35.  "> 


Ltdian. 


Scythian. 


NEGRO. 


Chaldee. 


ing  for  Assyria  and  Babylonia ;  it  is  so  striking  that  it  cannot  be  mis- 
taken. Next  to  the  Chaldean  stands  the  negro  for  the  Egypto- 
^Ethiopian  empire  added  by  Cambyses  to  the  Persian.  It  was  on  the 
Nile  that  Persia  became  first  acquainted  with  negroes,  and  therefore 
chose  them  for  the  representatives  of  Africa ;  though  the  empire  of 
the  Achsemenidas,  ceasing  in  Nubia  and  the  western  Oases,  never 
extended  over  Negro-land,  or  the  Soodan  proper.  The  third  sup- 
porter of  the  platform  can  be  none  else  than  the  representative  of 
the  Scythian  empire  of  Astyages.  His  peculiarly-round  skull,  which 
still  characterizes  the  pure  Turkish  and  Magyar  blood,  designates 
him  as  belonging  to  a  Turanian  race.  The  last  figure  in  the  group 
wears  the  Phrygian  cap,  and  personifies  the  Lydian  empire  of 
Crcesus,  of  which  Phrygia,  on  account  of  its  rich  gold-mines,  was 
the  most  important  province. 

Thus,  in  the  rock-hewn  tomb  of  Darius,  (about  490  B.  c.)  at  a  time 

i«  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  85,  fig.  1 ;  and  pp.  247-9. 

i«  Texieb,  L'Armenie  el  la  Perse,  II.,  pi.  126,  "Persepolis — Tombeau  dans  le  roc." 


CUNEIFORM    WRITING.  151 

when  Greek  art  was  still  archaic,  Persian  sculpture  preserved 
five  characteristic  types  of  mankind  in  an  admirable  work  of  art, 
as  evidences  of  the  constancy  of  the  peculiar  cast  of  features  of 
human  races.  The  monumental  negro  resembles  the  negro  of  to-day ; 
the  Arian  features  of  king  Darius  and  his  guards  are  identical  with 
those  we  meet  still  in  Persia  and  all  over  Europe ;  the  Turanian  (or 
Scythian)  bears  a  family  resemblance  to  many  Turks  and  Hunga- 
rians ;  the  identity  of  the  Assyrian  and  modern  Chaldean  physiog- 
nomy has  been  mentioned  and  proved  above ;  and  the  Phrygian 
represents  the  mixed  population  of  Asia  Minor,  a  modification  of  the 
Arian  type  by  the  infusion  of  foreign  blood — Iranian,  Scythic,  and 
Shemitish  interminglings. 

Persian  art,  as  a  branch  and  daughter  of  the  Assyrian,  never  rose 
to  a  higher  development  than  under  Darius  and  Xerxes.  The  dis- 
sensions and  the  profligacy  of  the  royal  house  checked  the  progress 
of  art,  which  remained  stationary  until  Alexander  the  Macedonian 
destroyed  the  independence  of  the  empire,  and  tried  to  hellenize  the 
subdued  Persians.  His  endeavors,  continued  by  the  first  Seleucidse 
of  Syria,  were  not  devoid  of  results ;  because,  even  when  Persia 
recovered  its  independence  and  re-appeared  in  history  as  the  Par- 
thian empire,  all  its  coins  bear  Greek  inscriptions  and  imitations  of 
Grecian  types.  "We  ought  not  to  forget,  notwithstanding,  that  the 
Parthians  were  probably  not  Persians  proper,  but  an  unartistical  Tu- 
ranian tribe,  held  in  subjection  by  the  earlier  Persians  under  their 
Achsemenian  kings,  which,  in  its  turn,  revolting  from  the  yoke,  ruled 
the  Persians  for  above  four  centuries. 

Some  specimens  of  a  peculiar  style  of  art  have  been  lately  disco- 
vered within  the  boundaries  of  the  old  Persian  empire,  viz  :  at  Pte- 
riurn  and  ISTymphse.  They  were  published  by  Texier  ; 148  and  it  has 
been  suggested  that  they  might  be  Median.  The  bas-reliefs  certainly 
present  nothing  to  suggest  any  relation  to  the  art  of  that  race  which 
originated  the  cuneiform  writing ;  nor  is  a  perceptible  affinity  con- 
spicuous between  them  and  the  Egyptian  style.  Nevertheless,  the 
artists  who  chiselled  them  knew  of  the  productions  of  Greek  genius. 
The  breath  of  Hellenism  has  passed  over  them,  as  we  perceive  from 
the  following  male  [36]  and  female  [37]  heads.  They  are,  therefore, 
by  many  centuries  posterior  to  the  great  Median  empire.  Still,  it 
would  be  presumptuous  to  attribute  them  to  any  determinate  nation- 
ality, since  none  of  the  highlands  flanking  Asia  Minor,  inhabited  then 
by  aboriginal  tribes,  were  ever  completely  hellenized;  although  they 
were   powerfully  affected  by  the  genius  of  Hellas,  whose  progress 

148  Asie  Mineure,  PI.  61,  78,—"  Bas-relief  taille'  dans  le  roc.     L'Offrande" — et  seq. 


152        NATIONS    OF    THE    CUNEIFORM    WRITING. 


Fig.  36. 


Fig.  37. 


never  was  stopped  by  "barbarians,"  but  only  by  the  equally  pow- 
erful and  expanding  Sbemitic  and 
Arian  civilization.  The  national 
spirit  of  the  Arians  in  Persia  revived 
after  five  centuries  of  Greek  and  heL 
fem'zed-Parthian  rule.  Ardeschir, 
tbe  son  of  Babek,  and  grandson  to 
Sassan,  rose  up  in  rebellion  against 
tbe  Parthian  Arsacides,  and  broke 
down  their  supremacy  in  a  long 
protracted  war  about  the  beginning 
of  the  third  century  of  our  era  (a.  d. 
214-226 :  obiit,  240).  With  his  tri- 
umph,   Persian    art    revived    once 


Goddess  from 
Pterium. 


more ;  and  although  it  inherited  no 


Fig.  38. 


connection  with  the  traditions  of 
Achsemenian  art,  it  was  again  characterized  by  the  peculiar  rich- 
ness of  the  flowing  drapery.  Sassanide  art  is  at  any  rate  equal,  if  not 
superior,  to  the  contemporary  style  of  Rome ;  indeed,  the  head  of  Ar- 
deschir himself,  [38]  from  a  rock- 
sculpture  at  Persepolis,  is  a -most 
creditable  work  of  art,  scarcely 
surpassed  by  any  Roman  relief  of 
the  same  period.  This  "Indian 
summer"  of  ancient  Persian  art 
lasted  but  for  a  short  time ;  it  de- 
generated under  the  later  kings, 
and  was  entirely  destroyed  by  the 
Mohammedan  conquest,  in  the  se- 
venth century.  The  Kur'an  was 
introduced  by  fire  and  sword,  and 
became  soon  the  undisputed  law 
of  the  Persian  race.  Accordingly, 
we  might  expect  the  cessation  of 
artistical  life.  But  here  we  meet  with  a  most  striking  evidence  in 
favor  of  our  assertion  that  art  is  the  result  of  a  peculiar  innate  ten- 
dency of  some  races,  which  cannot  be  crushed  out  by  civil  and  reli- 
gious prohibitions.  As  soon  as  the  Persians  recovered  their  politi- 
cal independence,  and  fell  off  from  the  Arab,  Khalifate  of  Bagdad, 
they  continued  to  draw  and  even  to  carve  human  forms,  though  they 
never  ceased  to  profess  strict  adherence  to  the  Kur'an.     Their  style 


Ardeschir.149 


119  Texier,  Armenie,  1852,  ii.,  PI.  148. 


THE    ETRUSCANS    AND     THEIR    ART.  153 

of  art  changed  now  for  the  third  time ;  but  neither  the  instinct  for 
art,  nor  its  habitual  practice,  has  ever  yet  been  destroyed  among  the 
true  Iranian  race  of  Persia. 


Y.  —  THE    ETRUSCANS    AND    THEIR    ART. 

The  Etruscans  were  a  mongrel  race,  the  result  of  the  amalgama- 
tion of  different  tribes,  partly  Asiatic,  partly  European,  both  Italian 
and  Greek.  Their  language  was  mixed,  though  it  is  still  greatly 
disputed  how  far  the  Greek  elements  pervaded  the  aboriginal  forms 
of  speech.  As  to  the  origin  of  the  Etruscans :  the  most  probable 
opinion  is,  that  Lydians  from  the  ancient  Torrhebis  in  Asia  emi- 
grated to  Italy  and  became  the  rulers  of  the  then  little-civilized  abo- 
rigines, who  were  either  Pelasgic  TJnibrians,  or  a  Celtic  Alpine  tribe, 
which  had-  previously  and  gradually  migrated  southwards.  They  - 
held  the  country  from  the  Po  to  the  Tiber,  and  extended  even  to  (Jf 
southern  Italy.  Greek  immigrants,  principally  ^Eolians  from  Corinth, 
settled  among  them  at  a  somewhat  later  period,  and  the  mixture  of 
these  nationalities  produced  the  historical  Etruscans.  In  regard  to 
the  details,  the  standard  authors  on  Etruria  differ  in  their  opinions. 
Raoul-Pochette  takes  them  for  Pelasgi,  modified  by  Lydians; 
whereas  15Tiebu.hr  denies  the  Lydian  immigration  related  by  Herodo- 
tus ;  the  Tyrrhenians  being  with  him  foreign  conquering  invaders, 
but  not  Lydians.  Still,  the  monuments  of  Etruria  bear  evidence 
both  to  the  early  connection  between  Etruria  and  Lower  Asia,  and 
to  the  existence  of  an  unartistic  aboriginal  population  of  Umbri, 
Siculi,  &c. 

This  view  is  supported  by  a  great  orientalist,  Lanci,150  who  distin- 
guishes three  periods  of  Etruscan  literature : — 1st.  When  the  Phoe- 
nico-Lydian  elements  arrived  in  Italy ;  2d.,  when  the  Greeks  began 
to  mix  with  it,  after  the  advent  of  Demaratus ;  and  3d.,  when  Gre- 
cian mythology,  letters,  and  tongue,  preponderated.  Similar  is  that 
of  Lenormant,151  in  perceiving  three  phases  of  civilization  in  Etruria 
— "  une  phase  asiatique,  une  phase  corinthienne,  une  phase  athe- 
nienne."  If,  notwithstanding,  we  remember  how,  as  late  as  1848,  the 
whole  stock  of  words  recovered  from  inscriptions  amounted  to  but 
thirty-three ; 152  and  that, — besides  a  few  names  of  deities,  like  ^ESAR, 
"God"  (Osiris ?),— tl^e  formula  RLL  AVTL  "vixit  annos,"  CLAN" 

loo  Parere  di  Michaelangelo  Lanci  inlorno  all'  Iscrizione  Elrusca  delta  statua  Todina  del 
museo  Valicano,  Roma,  Aprile,  1837. 

151  "  Fragment  sur  l'etude  des  vases  peintes  antiques,  Revue  Archeol.,  May,  1844,  p.  87. 

152  Denis,  Cities  and  Cemeteries  of  Etruria,  London,  1848,  pp.  xlii-v,  that  is  to  say,  such 
words  as  cannot  be  explained  from  Greek  and  Latin  roots. 


-'• 


154  THE    ETRUSCANS 

"filius,"  and  SEC  "filia,"  comprised  all  now  known  in  reality  of  the 
lost  speech  of  the  Tyrrheni  ;  we  may  well  exclaim  with  the  prophet, 
"  it  is  an  ancient  nation,  a  nation  whose  language  thou  knowest  not." 

"Whatever  be  the  pedigree  of  the  Etruscans,  they  were  a  hardy  and 
enterprising  nation,  full  of  energy  and  skill,  ready  to  receive  improve- 
ments from  foreign  populations,  even  if,  in  their  institutions,  they 
were  rather  conservative.  History  shows  them  as  a  free,  aristocratic, 
and  manufacturing  nation,  characterized  by  a  marked  practical  ten- 
dency, by  little  idealism  and  feeling  for  beauty,  but  much  ingenuity 
in  applying  art  to  household  purposes  and  to  the  comfort  of  private 
life.  They  were,  in  fact,  the  English  of  antiquity, — but  they  had  not 
the  good  luck  of  the  British  islanders  to  be  surrounded  by  the  sea, 
and  thus  to  have  enjoyed  the  possibility  of  maintaining  and  develop- 
ing their  independence  without  foreign  intervention.  Eew  dangers 
threatened  the  Etruscans  from  the  north :  they  protected  themselves 
sufficiently  against  the  incursions  of  savage  Gauls,  by  fortifying  their 
towns,  the  cyclopean  walls  of  which  are  still  the  wonder  of  the  tra- 
veller. It  was  principally  towards  the  south  that  they  had  to  contend 
with  powerful  foes.  The  maritime  states  of  Cumse,  Corinth,  Syra- 
cuse, and  Carthage,  interfered  with  the  extension  of  Etruscan  naval 
enterprise,  and  prevented  its  full  development  on  the  Adriatic  and 
on  the  Mediterranean.  Still,  the  Etruscans  were  strong  enough  to 
defend  their  own  coast,  and  to  exclude  the  establishment  of  indepen- 
dent Greek  and  Punic  settlements  on  the  Tuscan  territory.  A  more 
important  and  finally  fatal  enemy  arose  in  their  immediate  vicinity, 
■ — Rome,  with  her  population  of  hardy  agriculturists,  and  a  senate 
bent  upon  conquest  and  annexation.  Accordingly,  wars  recurred 
from  time  to  time,  from  the  foundation  of  the  city  until  120  b.  c, 
when  the  Tyrrhenian  country  was  finally  annexed  to  Rome.  Never- 
theless, the  city  on  the  Tiber  had  long  previously  felt  the  influence 
of  the  Etruscans  in  her  institutions,  laws,  and  religion.  Etruria  gave 
kings  and  senators  to  Rome.  Her  sacerdotal  rites,  her  works  of 
public  utility,  the  dignified  costume  of  official  splendor,  and  appa- 
rently even  that  universal  popular  garb,  the  toga,  were  all  of  Etrus- 
can origin. 

There  are  principally  three  features  in  the  history  of  Etruria,  which 
had  a  peculiar  influence  on  its  art.  Being  of  mixed  origin  themselves, 
the  Tuscans  displayed  a  greater  receptivity  of  exotic  influences,  than 
more  homogeneous  nations,  who  feel  always'  a  kind  of  repulsion 
against  foreigners.  Being  exposed  to  the  attacks  of  the  Gauls,  they 
had  to  live  in  towns ;  and  therefore  commerce  and  manufacturing 
industry  were  of  greater  importance  among  them  than  agriculture. 
Lastly,  their  history  presents  no  epoch  of  great  national  triumphs,  ele- 


AND    THEIR    ART.  155 

vating  the  patriotism  of  the  people,  and  inspiring  the  poet  and  artist. 
Art  being  everywhere  the  mirror  of  national  life,  we  find  these  pecu- 
liar features  of  the  Tuscan  history  expressed  in  the  paintings  and 
sculptures  of  Etruria.  They  lack  originality.  The  artists  borrowed 
their  forms  of  art  from  all  the  nations  with  whom  their  country  came 
into  contact.  Idealism  and  a  higher  sense  of  beauty  remained  foreign 
to  them ;  in  consequence,  they  never  reached  the  highest  eminence 
of  art.  Under  their  hands,  it  became  principally  ornamental  and 
decorative,  mechanical;  and,  above  all,  practical  and  comfortable 
among  these  obesos  et  pingues  Etruscos.  Whilst  temples  and  their 
propylee  are  the  principal  objects  of  Greek  architecture,  the  walls  of 
the  town,  the  bridge,  the  canal,  the  sewer,  and  the  highway,  charac- 
terize Tuscan  art. 

This  Etruscan  want  of  originality  and  peculiar  receptivity  of  foreign 
influences  extends  not  only  to  the  forms,  but  even  to  the  subjects  of 
their  paintings  and  sculpture.  They  rarely  occupy  themselves  with 
their  own  myths  and  superstitions,  but  deal  principally  with  Greek 
mj'thology  as  developed  by  the  great  Epics  and  even  Tragic  poetry 
of  Greece. 

All  the  artistical  forms  of  Etruria  were  imported  from  abroad. 
Micali,  in  his  Monumenti  Antichi,  and  Monumenti  Inediti,  has  pub- 
lished so  many  and  such  various  ancient  relics  of  Etruscan  workman- 
ship, that  a  three-fold  foreign  influence  on  Tuscan  art  can  no  longer 
be  doubted,  viz :  Egyptian,  Asiatic  and  Greek.  Besides  these,  we 
find  that  the  bulk  of  the  nation  must  have  clung  to  a  peculiar  kind 
of  barbarous  and  ugly  idols,  intentionally  distorted  like  the  pateeci  of 
the  Phoenicians.  These  deformed  caricatures  continued  to  be  fabri- 
cated in  Etruria  to  a  rather  late  period : 153  they  are  an  evidence  of  the 
fact  that  there  was  an  unartistical  element  in  the  Tuscan  nation, 
never  polished  by  the  Lydian  and  Greek  immigration.  The  easy 
introduction  of  foreign  forms  of  art  shows  likewise  that  there  existed 
no  higher  national  style  in  Etruria  previous  to  the  Tyrrhenian 
influences. 

The  most  peculiar  of  all  the  foreign  forms  of  art  among  the  Tus- 
cans is  the  Scarabseus,  that  is  to  say,  the  beetle-shape  of  their  sculp- 
tured gems.  They  must  have  borrowed  it  direct  from  Egypt  without 
any  Greek  inter-medium,  since  the  scarab-form  of  gems  is  exceedingly 
rare  in  Greece,  and  not  of  so  early  a  period  as  the  Etruscan  scarabsei. 
In  Egypt  this  form  was  always  national,  being  the  most  common 
symbol  of  the  creative  power  of  godhead.     The  Egyptian,  beholding 

153  Gerhard,  Sformale  immagini  in  Bronzo,  Bullelino  dell'  Institute,  1830,  p.  11 ;  and  Etru- 
rischc  Spiegelzeichnurgen,  Chap.  1. 


156  THE    ETRUSCANS 

the  beetle  of  the  Nile  with  its  hind  legs  rolling  a  ball  of  mud,  which 
contained  the  eggs  of  the  insect,  from  the  river  to  the  desert,  saw  in 
the  scarabaaus  the  symbol  of  the  Creator,  shaping  the  ball  of  the 
earth  out  of  wet  clay,  and  planting  in  it  the  seeds  of  all  life.154  The 
Egyptian  artist  often  represented  this  symbol  of  godhead ;  and  when 
he  had  to  carve  a  seal,  (the  sign  of  authenticity  by  which  kings  and 
citizens  ratify  their  pledged  word  and  engagements,)  he  cut  it  on 
stone,  which  he  carved  into  the  shape  of  a  beetle,  as  if  thus  to  place 
the  seal  under  the  protection  and  upon  the  symbol  of  godhead,  in 
order  to  deter  people  both  from  forgery  and  from  falsehood.  Placed 
over  the  stomach  of  a  mummy,  according  to  rules  specially  enjoined 
in  the  "funereal  ritual,"  it  was  deemed  a  never-failing  talisman  to 
shield  the  "soul"  of  its  wearer  against  the  terrific  genii  of  Anienthi. 
The  Egyptian  symbol,  however,  possessed  no  analogous  religious 
meaning  for  the  Etruscans  when  they  adopted  the  form  of  the 
scarabfeus :  and  even  after  they  had  abandoned  it,  they  still  retained 
the  Egyptian  cartouche,  which  encircles  nearly  all  the  works  of  Etrus- 
can glyptic. 

Besides  the  scarabsei,  we  find  in  Etruria  several  other  Egyptian 
reminiscences, — head-dresses  similar  to  the  Pharaonic  fashion,155  and 
even  idols  of  glazed  earthenware,  entirely  of  Egyptian  shape ;  for 
instance  the  representation  of  Khons,  the  Egyptian  Hercules ; 156  of 
Onoueis,  the  Egyptian  Mars ;  or  of  sistrums  and  cats,157  all  of  them 
most  strikingly  Egyptian  in  their  style. 

A  certain  class  of  black  earthenware  vases  decorated  with  stamped 
representations  in  relief,  many  of  the  earliest  painted  vases,  some 
gems  mostly  of  green  jasper,  and  the  marble  statue  of  Polledrara 
now  in  the  British  Museum,  are  by  style  and  costume  so  closely  con- 
nected with  the  monuments  of  Assyria,  that  it  is  now  difficult  to 
doubt  of  a  connection  between  Etruria  and  inner  Asia.  The  disbe- 
lievers in  the  Lydian  immigration  explain  the  Oriental  types  of 
Etruria  by  intercourse  with  Phoenician  merchants,  and  by  the  im- 
portation of  Babylonian  tapestry, — -celebrated  all  over  the  ancient 
world,  —  which  might  have  familiarized  the  Etruscans  with  the 
Assyrian  style  and  type  of  art.  But  the  use  of  the  arch  in  Tuscan 
architecture  finally  disposes  of  this  explanation,  since  we  learned  that 
the  arch  was  known  to  the  Assyrians,  but  not  to  the  early  Greeks. 
It  was  introduced  into  the  states  of  Hellas  at  a  rather  late  period,  about 

154  Hoeapollo  Nilous,  Hieroglyphica,  transl.  Cory,  London,  1840;  —  "How  an  only- 
begotten,"  |  X,  pp.  19-22. 

155  Monumenti  dell'  Institute-,  vol.  1,  pi.  XLI.  fig.  11-12. 

156  Micalt,  Monumenti  Antiehi,  tav.  45-46. 
15'  Idem,  Monum.  Inedili,  tav.  I,  II,  XVII,  L. 


AND     THEIR    ART.  157 

the  times  of  Phidias.  Had  this  architectural  form  heen  brought  to 
Etruria  by  the  Phoenicians,  it  would  have  reached  Greece  at  the  same 
time  as  Italy,  or  earlier;  whereas  the  contrary  is  the  case.  The 
earliest  architectural  arch  we  know  is  in  Egypt,  and  belongs  to  the 
reign  of  Eamesses  the  Great.158  Monsieur  Place  and  Dr.  Layard  have 
discovered  brick  arches  in  the  palaces  of  Sargon  and  his  successors 
in  Assyria,  and  on  the  Ninevite  reliefs  we  often  see  arched  gates  with 
regular  key-stones.  Etruria  was  the  next  in  time  to  make  use  of  the 
arch.  The  Lydians,  neighbors  of  Assyria,  must  have  been  acquainted 
with  arched  buildings,  and  in  their  new  home  made  a  most  extensive 
use  of  this  architectural  feature  for  gates,  and  for  sewers ;  of  which 
the  celebrated  Qloaca  Maxima  of  Rome,  built  by  the  Tarquinii,  is  the 
most  important  still-extant  example.  It  is,  therefore,  rather  amusing 
to  perceive  that  Seneca,159  having  before  his  eyes  this  monument  of  his 
country's  early  greatness,  thoughtlessly  alleges  that  Democritus,  the 
contemporary  of  Phidias,  invented  the  principle  of  the  arch  and  of  the 
key-stone.  Indeed,  the  Romans  were  no  great  critics :  Seneca  ex- 
tracted the  above-mentioned  fact(!)from  the  Greek  author Posidonius, 
and  trusted  his  Grecian  authority  more  than  his  own  knowledge. 
Democritus  was  probably  the  man  who  introduced  the  arch  from 
Italy  into  Greece,  and  got  the  credit  of  its  invention  among  his  vain 
fellow-citizens. 

Of  all  the  foreign  influences  on  Etruscan  art,  the  Greek  was  the 
most  powerful.  It  soon  superseded  both  the  Egyptian  and  the 
Oriental  types.  But  here  we  ought  not  to  forget  that  many  of  the 
Italic  colonies  of  Grsecia  Magna  came  from  Asia,  not  from  European 
Greece,  and  that  the  art  of  Ionia  proper  and  of  the  neighboring 
countries  exercised  at  least  an  equal  influence  on  the  Italiots  with 
that  of  Greece  proper.  Our  histories  of  art,  hitherto,  have  not  paid 
sufficient  attention  to  the  development  of  art  among  the  Asiatic 
Greeks ;  although  the  monuments  discovered  and  to  a  certain  extent 
published  by  Sir  Charles  Fellowes,  Texier,  Elandin  and  others,  yield 
ample  material  for  a  comprehensive  work  on  the  subject,  which 
might  probably  show  that  not  only  the  poetry,  history  or  philosophy, 
of  the  Greeks,  but  even  their  art,  had  its  cradle  in  Asia  Minor.  At  any 
rate,  the  numerous  colonies  of  Miletus,  Phocfea,  Heraclia,  Cyme,and 
other  states  of  Ionia  and  ^Eolis,  carried  the  principles  of  Greek  art 
further  than  Greece  proper. 

As  to  the  Greek  influence  on  Etruria,  we  have  to  distinguish  two 
if  not  three  periods :  the  early  Asiatic  Ionian,  which  introduced  the 

ls8  Sir  Gardner  Wilkinson,  Ancient  Egyptians,  v.  1,  p.  18,  &  II,  p.  300: — crude  brick 
arches  are,  however,  certainly  as  old  as  Thotmes  III. 
153  Epistol.  90. 


158 


THE    ETRUSCANS    AND    THEIR    ART. 


rigid  archaic  style  of  the  Tuscan  bronze-figures ;  16°  the  later  Doric 
style,  carried  to  Tarquinii  from  Corinth  by  Demaratus,  which  cha- 
racterizes the  potteries  of  Italy ;  and  perhaps  a  still  later  Attic  style, 
chaste  and  dignified,  such  as  we  admire  on  the  best  Etruscan  vases. 
Inasmuch,  however,  as  all  the  names  of  the  artists  inscribed  on  the 
vases,  the  alphabet  of  the  inscriptions,  and  the  style  of  the  drawing, 
are  exclusively  Grecian,  there  are  many  arch^ologists  who  do  not 
attribute  them  to  Etruria,  but  believe  they  may  have  either  been 
imported  from  Greece,  or  manufactured  in  Etruria  by  guilds  of  Greek 
artists  who  maintained  their  nationality  in  the  midst  of  the  Tuscans. 
The  national  type  of  Tuscan  physiognomies  is  rather  ugly :  entirely 
different  from  the  Egyptian,  Shemitic,  Assyrian  or  Greek  cast.  It 
is  characterized  by  a  low  forehead,  high  cheek-bones,  and  a  coarse 
and  prominent  chin.  The  following  wood-cut  [38]  shows  two  archaic 
heads  from  an  embossed  silver-relief  found  in  Perugia,161  now  in  the 
British  Museum.   The  next  figure  is  a  fragment  of  a  statue,  [89]  sculp- 


Fig.  38. 


Fig.  39. 


Etruscan  Heads. 


Vulcian  Head. 


tured  out  of  a  porous  volcanic  stone  called  Nenfro.  It  was  found  at 
Vulci,  and  is  remarkable  for  the  Egyptian  head-dress  and  Etruscan 
features.162  The  head  of  Eos,  or  Aurora,  [40]  from  a  celebrated  bronze 
now  in  the  British  Museum,  found  at  Falterona  in  the  province  of 
Casentino,163  gives  a  poor  idea  of  the  Tuscan  feeling  for  beauty ;  still, 
the  liveliness  of  the  movement  and  the  excellent  execution  of  the 
statuette  cannot  but  excite  our  admiration.  Another  head  [41]  of  a 
bronze  figure  in  the  British  Museum  strikingly  exhibits  the  Etruscan 


160  The  Etruscan  bronzes  closely  resemble  the  archaic  Greek  figures :  still,  the  peculiar 
Etruscan  physiognomy,  and  the  national  fashion  of  shaving  the  beard,  distinguish  them 
from  the  early  Greek  monuments. 

161  Milmngen,  Ancient  Inedited  Monuments,  HE,  pi. 

162  Monumenti  dell'  Institute-,  I,  pi.  XLI ;  and  Lenoir,  Tombeaux  Urusgues,  Annali  dell'  Insti- 
tute-, 1832,  page  270. 

163  See  also  Mioali,  Mon.  Inediti,  pp.  86-98,  tavola  XIII,  1  and  2. 


THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS.  159 

type  of  features.     These  four  specimens  suffice  to  show  the  peculi- 

Fig.  40.  Fig.  41. 


Eos. 


Etkuscan. 


arity  of,  and  the  difference  between,  the  art  of  Etruria  and  that  of 
the  surrounding  nations.  It  occupies  a  higher  rank  than  the  art  of 
Phoenicia,  but  it  is  inferior  to  the  Greek,  since  it  remained  depend- 
ent upon  foreign  forms,  and  was  unable  to  acclimatize  itself 
thoroughly  in  upper  Italy. 


VI.  —  THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 

It  was  the  Greeks,  who,  among  the  Japetide  nations,  occupied  the 
most  important  place  in  the  histoiy  of  mankind.  Though  compara- 
tively few  in  number,  they  have,  during  the  short  time  of  their 
national  independence,  done  more  for  the  ennoblement  of  the  human 
race,  than  any  other  people  on  earth.  It  was  among  the  Greeks 
that  the  genius  of  freedom,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  expanded 
its  wings  in  highly  civilized  states,  even  under  the  most  complicated 
relations  of  aristocracy  and  democracy,  of  unity,  suzerainty  and 
federalism.  Under  the  rule  of  liberty,  the  Greek  mind  dived  boldly 
into  the  sea  of  knowledge,  and  along  with  the  treasures  of  science 
secured  that  idea  of  plastical  beauty  and  measure,  which  pervades 
all  the  Hellenic  life  so  thoroughly  that  even  virtue  was  known  amongst 
that  gifted  race  only  as  xciXmaya'hia. ;  that  is  to  say,  beauty  and  good- 
ness. The  power  of  Greek  genius  manifested  itself  not  only  by  its 
intensity  when  applying  itself  to  science  and  art,  but  likewise  by  its 
expansion  and  fertility.  All  the  shores  of  the  Euxine,  of  lower 
Italy,  Sicily,  Cyrene,  and  considerable  portions  of  the  Gaulish  coast, 
were   studded  with  Greek   colonies,  proceeding  from  the  mother 


1G0  THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 

country  lite  bee-swarms,  not  in  order  to  extend  its  power,  but  to 
grow  up  themselves,  and  to  prosper  freely  and  independently. 
Within  the  same  period,  Macedonia,  Epirus,  and  the  inner  countries 
of  Asia  Minor,  up  to  the  confines  of  the  Shemites,  were  pervaded 
by  Greek  influences  in  art  and  manners ;  and  when  at  last  exhausted 
by  their  unhappy  divisions,  the  Greeks  lost  their  independence,  the 
hellenic  spirit  still  maintained  itself  in  art  and  science ;  and,  carried 
by  Macedonian  arms  all  over  the  Persian  empire  and  Egypt,  con- 
tinued to  live  and  to  thrive  among  nations  of  a  high  indigenous 
civilization.  Greece,  conquered  by  Rome,  as  Horace  says,  subdued 
the  savage  conqueror,  and  imported  art  and  culture  into  the  rude 
Latin  world.  Absorbed  ethnically  by  amalgamation  with  Roman 
elements,  Hellenism  survived  even  the  political  wreck  of  Rome,  and 
rose  to  a  second  though  feeble  development  among  the  mongrel 
Byzantines,  who,  well  aware  that  they  were  not  Greeks,  although 
speaking  the  Greek  language,  never  ceased  to  call  themselves 
Romans.  Even  now  their  country  is  called  Roum-ili,  by  the  Turk, 
and  they  call  their  own  language  Romaic.  Down  to  our  own  days, 
Greek  genius  exerts  its  humanizing  influences  over  the  most  highly 
cultivated  part  of  the  world,  constituting  the  foundation  of  all  the 
most  comprehensive  and  properly  human  education. 

The  national  ebaracter  of  the  Greeks,  as  expressed  in  their  history, 
is  fully  developed  in  their  art,  which  from  its  very  beginning  is 
characterized  by  freedom  and  movement,  restricted  by  the  most 
delicate  feeling  for  measure,  and  refined  by  a  tendency  towards  the 
ideal,  without  losing  sight  of  nature.  Progressive  in  its  character, 
Greek  art  often  change  its  forms  of  expression, — we  may  say  from 
generation  to  generation, — with  a  fertility  of  genius,  easier  to  be 
admired  than  explained.  In  Egyptian,  Assyrian,  and  Persian  sculp- 
ture, we  noticed  successive  changes  in  the  details,  but  scarcely  any 
real  and  substantial  progress.  Among  all  those  nations,  the  rudi- 
ments of  art  were  not  materially  different  from  their  highest  develop- 
ment ;  whilst  in  Greece  we  are  able  to  trace  the  history  of  sculpture 
from  comparative  rudeness  to  the  highest  degree  of  eminence  — 
human  perfectibility,  under  the  rule  of  freedom,  has  never  been 
more  gloriously  personified  than  in  the  Greek  nation. 

The  question  of  the  origin  of  Greek  art  has  often  been  raised  in 
antiquity  as  well  as  in  modern  times,  but  the  answers  are  altogether 
contradictory. 

The  celebrated  Roman  admiral  Pliny,  a  "dilettante"  who  compiled 
his  Natural  History  indiscriminately  from  all  the  sources  accessible 
to  him,  preserved  the  charming  story  of  the  Corinthian  girl,  who 
drew  the  outline  of  the  shadow  of  her  departing  lover's  face  on  the 


THE     ART    OF     THE     GREEKS.  161 

wall,  aud  mentions  it  as  the  first  artistical  attempt.  Her  father,  he 
continues,  filled  the  outline  up  with  clay,  and  baking  it,  produced 
the  first  relief.  "We  can  scarcely  doubt  that  this  pretty  tale  is 
derived  from  some  Greek  epigram,  which  was  popular  in  the  times 
of  Pliny,  for  connecting  art  with  love ;  but  it  cannot  satisfy  criticism. 
"Wmckelman,  the  father  of  scientific  archaeology,  deduced  the  Greek 
statue  a  priori  from  the  Herma  or  bust;  forgetting  that  Hermas  and 
busts,  where  the  head  has  to  represent  the  whole  figure,  belong  to 
the  later,  reflecting  epoch  of  sculpture.  No  little  boy  ever  tries  to 
draw  a  head  alone,  nor  can  he  enjoy  its  representation ;  he  looks 
immediately  for  its  complement,  the  body,  without  which  he  thinks 
it  deficient.  Indeed,  busts  and  Hermas  remained  unknown  to  the 
national  art  of  Egypt  and  Assyria ;  moreover,  the  earliest  sculptural 
works  mentioned  by  Greek  authors  are  statues,  not  busts.  So  are 
all  the  Palladia  and  Dsedalean  works,  the  outlines  and  general  fea- 
tures of  which  are  known  from  their  copies  on  vases,  coins  and 
gems.164  The  types  of  the  earliest  coins  are  figures,  though  soon 
succeeded  by  heads.  Steinbuchel,  with  apparent  plausibility,  de- 
rives Greek  art  from  Egypt.  Still,  it  is  rather  going  too  far  when 
he  connects  its  rudiments  with  the  mythical  Egyptian  immigration 
of  Cecrops  to  Attica,  and  of  Danaus  to  Argos,  hypothetically  placed 
about  1500  B.C.,  when  Egyptian  art  was  highly  developed.  "What- 
ever be  the  truth  about  the  nationality  of  Cecrops  and  Danaus,  so 
much  is  certain,  that  imitative  art  was  unknown  in  Greece  for  at 
least  seven  centuries  after  the  pretended  date  of  their  immigration; 
since  the  earliest  records  of  works  of  art  carry  us  scarcely  beyond 
the  end  of  the  seventh  century,  b.  c,  and  the  earliest  works  extant 
do  not  ascend  beyond  the  first  half  of  the  sixth  century.  Indeed, 
Greece  and  Grecians  existed  a  long  time  before  they  possessed  statu- 
aries.165 (Plutarch,  in  Numa,  says  that  images  were  by  the  learned 
considered  symbolical,  and  deplored.  Numa,  the  great  Roman  law- 
giver, forbade  his  people  to  represent  Gods  in  the  form  of  man  or 
beasts ;  and  this  injunction  was  followed  for  the  first  470  years  of  the 
republic.166)  Another  opinion,  that  Greek  art  is  a  daughter  of  the 
Assyrian,  is  likewise  often  hinted  at ;  but,  as  already  mentioned,  the 
earliest  works  of  Greek  sculpture  are  anterior,  by  a  score  of  years,  to 
the  bloom  of  the  Lydian  empire,  by  which  alone  Greece  could  have 
become  acquainted  with  the  art  of  inner  Asia.  But  though  we  cannot 
connect  the  rudiments  of  Greek  sculpture  either  with  Egypt  or  Assyria 

164  Prof.  Edward  Gerhard  published  many  of  them  in  his  "  Centurien." 
ira  Pausanias,  lib.  VIII.,  and  XXII. ;  and  lib.  IX. 

i86  Varro,   apud  Auffust.de  Oivit.  Dei,  lib.   IV.,   c,   6: — R.  Payne  Knight,   Symbolical 
Language  of  Ancient  Art  and  Mythology,  London,  1818,  p.  71. 
11 


162  THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 

and  Babylon,  we  must  still  admit  the  early  influence  of  Egyptian  (Saitic) 
and  oriental  art  over  Greece.  A  peculiar  school  of  ancient  sculpture, 
to  which  the  invention  of  casting  statues  is  attributed,  developed 
itself  in  the  island  of  Samos  between  the  30th  and  55th  Olympiad 
(657-557  b.  c.)  extending  from  the  time  of  Psammeticus  of  Egypt 
to  the  epoch  of  Croesus  of  Lydia,  and  Cyrus  of  Persia ;  and  history 
contains  many  evidences  of  the  intercourse  of  the  Samians  with  the 
kings  of  Egypt  and  Lydia,  and  with  the  merchants  of  Phoenicia. 
The  types  of  the  coins  of  Samos, — the  lion's  head  and  bull's  head, — 
are  similar  to  the  Assyrian  representations.  As  to  the  Egyptian 
influence,  Steinbiichel  justly  lays  peculiar  stress  upon  the  rude  archaic 
type  of  the  silver  coins  of  Athens  with  the  helmeted  head  of  Minerva, 
which  was  persistently  retained  by  the  republic  even  in  the  times  of 
her  highest  artistical  eminence.  It  certainly  shows  the  eye,  repre- 
sented in  the  Egyptian  front-view,  whilst  the  angle  of  the  lips  is 
raised,  and  smiles  in  the  later  pharaonic  manner.  All  the  earliest 
coins  and  bas-reliefs  of  Greece  are  characterized  by  the  same  pecu- 
liarity, and  some  of  them  retained  even  the  Egyptian  head-dress  in 
slightly  modified  forms.  The  anecdote  preserved  by  Diodorus 
Siculus,  concerning  Telecles  and  Theodorus  of  Samos, (who  are  said 
to  have  made  a  bronze  statue  in  two  halves,  independently  of  one 
another,  which  upon  being  joined  were  found  to  agree  perfectly),was 
likewise  explained  by  the  invariable  rules  of  the  Egyptian  canon  ;167 
though,  according  to  our  views,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  Egypt,  and 
owes  its  origin  probably  to  the  traces  of  chiselling  that  removed 
the  seam  of  the  cast  all  along  the  figure,  and  which  being  of  a  diffe- 
rent color  from  the  unchiselled  surface  of  the  statue,  was  mistaken 
for  ancient  soldering. 

The  indubitable  connexion  of  Greece  with  Egypt,  under  the  Sa'ite 
dynasty,  could  not  fail  to  have  great  influence  on  art.  The  Greeks 
gained  from  that  quarter  their  acquaintance  with  the  different 
mechanical  processes  of  sculpture,  carving,  moulding,  casting,  and 
chiselling:  though,  too  proud  to  acknowledge  their  debt  to  foreigners, 
they  attributed  the  invention  of  the  saw  and  file,  drill  and  rule,  to 
the  mythical  Cretan  Dsedalus,  or  to  the  Samian  Theodorus,  the 
elder ;  at  any  rate,  to  artists  natives  of  the  Archipelago  in  proximity 
with  Egypt.  It  seems,  indeed,  that  the  opening  of  Egypt  gave  a  sud- 
den impulse  to  sculpture  and  painting  among  the  Hellenes :  for  nearly 
all  the  earliest  works  mentioned  by  the  ancients  belong  to  this  period, 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  casket  of  Cypselos,  and  of  the 

167  Diodok.,  i,  98:— 60  f.:— MUller,  Archceologie,  \  70,  4. 


THE    ART    OP    THE    GREEKS. 


163 


golden  statue  of  Jupiter,  dedicated  by  Cypselos  at  Olympia.168  The 
athletic  statues  of  Arrhachion169  (53  Olympiad),  Praxidamas  (58 
01.),  and  Rhexibios  (61  01.),  at  Olympia,  of  Cleobis  and  Biton,  at 
Delphi170  (about  50  01.),  of  Harmodius  and  Aristogeiton,  at  Athens 
(67  01.),  all  works  of  the  Samian  school,  (and  among  them  the 
works  of  art  dedicated  by  Alyattes  and  Croesus  to  the  Delphian 
temple),  were  the  result  of  the  intercourse  with  Egypt :  and,  from  tbe 
description  of  some  of  them,  as  for  instance,  the  statue  of  Arrhachion, 
we  see  that  their  rigid  attitude  must  have  resembled  the  Egyptian 
statues.  Still,  whatever  be  the  foreign  influences  on  the  beginnings 
of  Greek  art,  nobody  will  ever  take  the  most  archaic  Greek  relief  for 
a  specimen  of  Egyptian  or  Assyrian  art.  Though  such  Greek  rudi- 
ments are  less  elaborate  than  the  royal  works  of  Thebes,  Nineveh,  or 
Persepolis,  they  have  a  peculiar  national  style  unmistakably  Greek. 
The  earliest  of  all  the  existing  Greek  marble  reliefs  is  the  fragment  of 
a  throne  found  in  Samothrace,  now  in  the  Louvre ;  [41]  which  certainly 


Fig.  41. 


Fig.  42. 


Samotheacian  Relief. 

belongs  to  the  beginning  of  the 

Vlth  century  b.  c.171  and  is  probably 

contemporaneous-  with  the  Pana- 

thensen    vases172  characterized  by 

the  figure  of  [42]  Minerva.     Both 

of  them  are  rude,  and  influenced  bv 

the  Egyptian  style.     Still,  the  long 

and  straight  nose,  the   prominent 

chin,  and  the  absence  of  individualism  in  the  representation,  are  all 

as  distinct  from  Egypt  as  from  Assyria. 

168  Ottfeied  Mullee  tries  to  prove  that  both  these  archaic  sculptures   must  belong  to 
a  period  posterior  to  Cypselos. 

w  Pausanias,  vi.,  18,  6.  «i  Millinoen,  Ancient  Inediled  Monuments,  v.  iii.,  1. 

«°  Heeodot.   1   31.  W  idem^  j,  i. 


MlNEEVA. 


164 


THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 


The  sense  of  beauty  was  not  yet  sufficiently  developed  among 
Greek  artists ;  but  it  is  remarkable  that  even  in  its  rudiments  Greek 
art,  unlike  tbe  Egyptian,173  bad  nothing  to  do  with  portraits ;  it  was 
not  the  king,  but  tbe  hero  and  the  god  who  became  the  objects  of 
the  artist's  creation.  Not  less  striking  is  the  complete  absence  of 
the  landscape  in  Grecian  art.  The  human  form  and  animated  nature 
are  for  the  Greek  the  exclusive  object  of  representation ;  accordingly, 
he  personifies  day  and  night,  the  sun  and  the  moon,  time  and  tbe 
seasons,  the  earth  and  the  sea,  the  mountains  and  the  rivers ;  he  gives 
them  the  features  of  men ;  but  tbe  human  figure  he  draws  is  always 
a  type  of  the  race,  not  the  e&gy  of  an  individual. 

The  peculiar  archaic  type,  characterized  by  the  elongated  form  of 
the  nose,  and  the  prominent  and  somewhat  pointed  chin,  maintained 
itself  up  to  the  time  of  Phidias,  preserving  the  characteristic  features 
of  the  early  Hellenes.  We  find  the  same  profile  on  the  coins  of  Do- 
rian and  of  Ionian  States,  in  Sicily,  in  Attica,  and  in  Asia  Minor. 
The  following  heads  will  sufficiently  explain  our  statement.    Fig. 


Fig.  43. 


Fig.  44. 


Athenian  Minerva.     (Pulszky  Coll.) 


Corinthian  Coin. 


43  is  the  type  of  the  Athenian  tetradrachms.  Fig.  44  is  tbe  enlarged 
copy  of  a  Corinthian  silver  coin.  The  following  wood-cut  is  taken 
from  the  coins  of  Phoceea,  in  Ionia  [45];  whilst  Fig.  46  is  copied 
from  one  of  the  statues  on  the  pediment  of  the  temple  of  ^Egina, 
dedicated  to  Jupiter  Panhellenius — the  god  of  all  the  Greeks — soon 
after  the  battle  of  Salamis  (Olymp.  75). 

1,3  [The  art  of  each  represents  the  instinctive  genius  of  the  two  people,  as  diverse  in 
intellect  as  in  blood. 

"  iEgyptiaca  numinum  fana  plena  plangoribus, 
Grseca  plerumque  choreis  " — 
Bays  Apuleius  (De  Genio.  Socrat.) ;  which  is  just  the  difference  between  Old  and  New  Eng- 
land puritanism  and  South  European  catholicity. — G.  E.  G.] 


THE    AKT    OF    THE    GREEKS. 
Fig.  45.  Fig-  46. 


165 


Phoolan  Coin. 


^Egina  Statue. 


The  mythical  victory  of  the  united  states  of  Hellas  over  the  Tro- 
jans, supported  by  all  their  Asiatic  kin,  represented  on  the  pediment 
of  this  temple,  was  intended  to  symbolize  the  recent  victory  of  the 
Greeks  over  the  Asiatic  host  of  Xerxes. 

One  generation  more  carries  us  at  once  to  the  glorious  time  of 
Pericles  and  Phidias,  to  the  highest  development  of  ideal  grandeur, 
as  seen  on  the  sculptures  of  the  Parthenon,  never  surpassed  by 
human  art, — the  beauty,  pride  and  triumph  of  youthful  Greece  lives 
in  them.  We  might  have  taken  one  of  the  Parthenon  fragments 
in  the  British  Museum,  which,  although  the  nose  is  mutilated,  would 
give  an  idea  of  the  genius  of  Phidias.  But  artistic  eminence  was 
not  confined  to  Attica  alone ;  in  Argos  and  Sicyon,  in  Sicily  and  in 
Grsecia  Magna,  in  Ionia  and  Cyrene,  sculptors  and  painters  grew  up 
second  to  none  but  to  Phidias.  For  more  than  one  century,  down  to 
the  time  of  Alexander  of  Macedon,  all  the  intestine  wars,  revolutions 
and  temporary  oppressions,  could  not  arrest  the  majestic  flow  of 
Greek  art,  characterized  by  freedom  and  ideal  beauty.  The  head 
of  a  child  [48]  from  a  Lycian  relief,174  and  of  a  warrior,  [49]  from  a 
monument  of  Iconium 175  (Koniah)  in  Lycaonia,  show  that  Hellenic  art 
flourished  even  in  those  countries  where  the  bulk  of  the  nation  was 
not  Greek,  though  we  ought  not  to  forget  that  all  those  monuments 
were  evidently  the  work  of  Hellenic  artists ;  for,  as  Cicero  justly 
remarks,  all  the  lands  of  the  "barbarians"  had  a  fringe  of  Greek 
countries  where  they  reached  the  sea.175     The  sculptures  of  Lydia, 


»*  Texier,  Asie  Mineure,  III,  pi.  226. 
1,5  Texier,  Armenie,  II,  pi.  84. — 1. 

176  De  Rep.  II,  iv,  —  Coloniarum  vero,  quce  est,  deducta  a  Grajis 
adluat  1     Ita  barbarorum  agris  quasi  adtexta  videtur  ora  esse  Grtscios. 


quam  unda  non 


166 


THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 


and  of  all  the  countries  of  Asia  Minor,  differ  little  from  the  monu- 
ments of  Greece  proper. 

The  type  of  the  Sicilians  and  of  the  Italiots  is  somewhat  more 
diverse ;  principally  characterized  by  the  full  and  round  chin  of  the 


Fig.  48. 


Ltcian  Child. 


Lycaonian  Soldier. 


Fig.  50. 


females,  as  seen  in  the  following  wood-cut  [50]  of  Proserpina,  taken 
from  an  intaglio  in  cornelian,  which  belongs  to  my  collection.     "We 

sometimes  find  the  same  peculiar  chin  even 
now  among  the  females  of  Calabria  and 
Sicily,  but  especially  on  the  island  of  Ischia, 
where,  according  to  a  tradition,  the  Greek 
blood  of  its  inhabitants  was  scarcely  mixed 
by  foreign  intermarriages. 

One  feature,  sufficiently  explained  by  the 
institutions  of  Greece,  is  common  to  all 
these  monuments  of  Hellenic  art,  viz :  the 
absence  of  portraits,  —  individuality  being 
merged  into  the  glorification  of  the  human 
form  by  a  purely  ideal  treatment.  Just  as 
in  life  the  idea  of  the  State  absorbed  the 
interests  and  even  the  rights  of  the  individual,  so  individuality  was 
ignored  in  the  art  of  Greece ;  we  never  meet  with  portraits  during 
all  the  time  of  Greek  independence;  for  even  the  representations 
meant  to  be  portraits  were  ideal.  Alcibiades,  according  to  Clemens 
Alexandrinus,177  became  a  Mercury,  and  Pericles  looked  a  demigod. 
A  rock-relief  on  a  tomb  in  Lycia,  at  Cadyanda,  the  cast  of  which  is 


Peoseepina. 
(Pulszky  Coll.) 


1,1  Admonit.  adversus  gentes,  p.  35. 


THE    ART    OF     THE    GREEKS. 


167 


now  in  the  British  Museum, 178  inscribed  with  the  historical  names  of 
Hecatomnos,  Mesos,  Seskos,  £c,  contains  no  portrait,  but  only  ideal 
figures.  The  Crcesus  of  the  magnificent  vase  of  the  Louvre  might 
be  taken  for  a  Jupiter,  were  it  not  designated  by  the  name.  It  was 
not  before  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Macedonian  that  real  portraits 
began  to  be  made.  Lysistratus,  brother  of  the  great  sculptor  Lysippus, 
was  in  Greece  the  first  who  made  a  plaster-cast  of  the  face  of  living 
persons,  and  who,  according  to  Pliny,179  made  real  likenesses,  whilst 
his  predecessors  had  tried  to  make  them  rather  beautiful  than  faith- 
ful. Pliny's  testimony  is  fully  borne  out  by  the  remaining  monu- 
ments of  art  belonging  to  the  period  of  Alexander :  they  show  during 
the  life  of  the  great  king  some  marked  attempts  at  individuality, 
though  idealism  is  not  yet  excluded  from  the  portrait.  The  head  of 
the  conqueror  of  Persia,  on  his  own  coins,  is  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  type  of  his  mythic  ancestor  Hercules.  Under  his  successor, 
Lysimachus,  the  portrait  of  Alexander  on  the  Macedonian  coins  is  by 
far  more  individual.  The  beautiful  bust  of  Demosthenes  I8°  [51]  in  the 
Vatican,  though  it  be  the  work  of  a  later  age,  is  certainly  a  copy  of 
a  bust  contemporaneous  with  the  last  great  citizen  of  Greece.  It 
exhibits  the  peculiar  features  and  lisping  mouth  of  the  eloquent 
unfortunate  patriot ;  still,  the  upper  part  of  the  head  is  undoubtedly 
ideal.  A  classical  cornelian  in  my  collection,  with  the  intaglio  head 
of  Demetrius  Poliorcetes  [52],  shows  the  efforts  of  some  artists  of  the 


Fig.  51. 


Fig.  52. 


Demosthenes. 


Demetrius  Poliokcetes,  (Pulszky  coll.) 


Macedonian  period  to  blend  idealism  with  individualism.  This 
king's  heroic  beauty  made  the  task  easier;  but  as,  in  those  times, 
a  portrait  always  implied  a  kind  of  apotheosis,  a  bull's  horn  was 

178  Synopsis  of  the  British  Museum,  Lycian  Room,  Nos.  150-152. 

1,9  XXXV,  44.  18°  Visconti,  Iconographti  grecque,  PI.  29,  fig.  2. 


168 


THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 


Fig.  53. 


Perseus. 


Fig.  54. 


added  to  the  head  to  designate  Demetrius  as  the  son  of  Neptune ; 
whilst  in  order  to  combine  the  horn  with  the  human  features,  the  hair 
was  carved  stiff,  reminding  one  of  the  rigidity  of  a  bull's  hair. 
Equally  grand  is  the  portrait  of  Perseus  [53],  the  last  king  of  Mace- 
donia, on  a  cornelian  cameo  in  the  imperial  library  at  Paris.181  It  so 

much  resembles  some  ancient  hero,  that 
for  a  considerable  time  it  was  taken  for 
an  ideal  head  of  Ulysses.  Indeed,  if  we 
wish  to  get  real  Hellenic  portraits,  we 
must  leave  the  territory  of  Greece,  and 
seek  for  them  among  the  more  realistic 
nations  pervaded  by  Hellenism,  amid 
whom  Greek  art  descended  from  the 
loftier  heights  of  imaginative  beauty,  to 
tread  the  humbler  paths  of  reality. 
Hitherto  no  actual  portrait  has  been  dis- 
covered belonging  to  the  times  of  repub- 
lican Greece.  The  following  beautiful 
head  [54]  on  an  Asiatic  silver  coin,  in  the 
British  Museum,  which  bears  the  simple 
inscription  BA2IAEfi2,  (the  coin)  "  of  the 
king,"  is  with  the  greatest  plausibility 
attributed  to  the  younger  Cyrus :  the  die 
being  sunk  by  some  Ionian  Greek  at  the 
time  when  this  Satrap  of  Asia  Minor  rose 
in  rebellion  against  his  brother  Arta- 
xerxes,  and  assumed  the  title  of  the  king. 
Still,  the  features  can  scarcely  be  fairly 
taken  for  a  portrait ;  they  are  altogether 
ideal,  in  fact  the  embellished  representa- 
tion of  the  purest  Arian  type. 
The  aboriginal  barbarism  of  the  remoter  provinces  of  the  Mace- 
donian empire, — which  was  strongly  modified,  but  never  entirely 
overcome  by  the  civilization  of  the  conquerors, — renders  the  history 
of  Hellenism  in  Asia,  after  the  death  of  Alexander,  most  instructive. 
It  is  recorded  on  the  relics  of  its  art,  especially  on  the  coins  of  those 
Greek  dynasties  which  were  not  surrounded  by  Greek  populations. 
From  the  shores  of  the  Euxine  to  the  confines  of  India,  they  pro- 
claim the  supremacy  of  Greek  genius.  Still,  Hellenism  maintains 
its  glory  only  there  where  a  continuous,  uninterrupted,  influx  of 
Greek  elements  keeps  up  the  original  blood  and  spirit  of  the  con- 

181  Millin,  Monuments  Inidits.,  1,  XIX ;  and  Frontispiece  to  the  Bulletin  archeol.  de  I'Athe- 
ncBum  Frangais  of  June,  1855. 


Cteits  the  younger. 


THE     ART    OF     THE     GREEKS. 


169 


querors,  as  for  instance  at  the  court  of  the  Seleueidse  at  Antioch,  and 
of  the  Ptolemies  at  Alexandria.  But  here  the  degeneration  of  the 
royal  houses  could  not  destroy  the  fertility  of  Hellenic  art ;  though  in 
all  the  countries  which  were  locally  separated  from  Greece,  Hellenism 
declined,  and  went  over  into  barharism  so  soon  as  the  original  Greek 
blood  of  the  conquerors  was  amalgamated  with,  and  absorbed  by, 
native  intermixture. 

The  coins  of  the  kingdom  of  Bactria  give  the  most  striking  illus- 
tration of  this  general  rule.  During  the  wars  between  the  Seleucidse 
and  the  Ptolemies,  Theodotus,  the  governor  of  Bactria  about  the 
middle  of  the  third  century,  B.C.,  declared  himself  independent  of 
Syria,  and  founded  the  Greek  dynasty  of  the  Bactrian  kingdom. 
About  the  same  time  the  Parthians  rose  likewise  in  revolt  against 
Antiochus  Theos,  and  their  success  cut  the  Bactrians  off  from 
Greece  proper,  and  even  from  the  Grecians  of  Syria.  Still,  for  about 
a  century,  Greek  art  beyond  the  Hindoo  Kush  did  not  decline. 

The  portrait  of  king  Eucratides,  king  of  Bactria,  b.  c.  170  [55],  is, 
on  the  coins,  a  most  creditable  specimen  of  the  taste  and  workman- 
ship of  his  artists.182  The  isolation  of  the  royal  family,  however,  and 
its  remoteness  from  Greece  and  from  Hellenic  influences,  unavoid- 
ably brought  about  a  relapse  into  barbarism.  King  Hermseus,  lord 
of  Bactria,  b.  c.  98  [56],  on  a  coin  in  the  British  Museum,  is,  accord- 


Fig.  55. 


Fig.  56. 


Fig.  57. 


Eucratides. 


HeBMjEUS. 


Kadphtses. 


ing  to  his  features,  apparently  a  descendant  of  Heliocles;  but  the 
workmanship  of  the  coin  is  heavy  and  coarse,  and  after  seeing  it  we 
can  scarcely  be  surprised  at  learning  that  his  dynasty  was  soon 
superseded  by  rude  Turanian  invaders,  who,  having  no  alphabet  of 
their  own,  maintained  at  first  the  Greek,  and  then  adopted  the 
Indian  letters  and  language.  In  the  execution  of  the  types  of  their 
coins,  they  exhibit  the  rudest  barbarism.     King  Kadphyses  [57], 


182  por  these  and  other  examples,  cf.  Wjlson,  Ariana  Antigua,  London,  1841. 


170 


THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 


a.  d.  50,  had  his  name  inscribed  in  Greek  characters,  on  his  coin, 
now  in  the  British  Museum ;  but  the  shape  of  his  skull  is  Turanian, 
and  the  die-sinker  must  have  been  a  half-civilized  and  probably 
half-bred  Bactrian. 

The  series  of  the  Arsacide  coins  is  equally  instructive,  and  leads 
to  the  same  result.  The  Macedonian  conquest  destroyed  at  once 
the  old  Persian  institutions  and  civilization ;  for,  although  Alexander 
assumed  the  royal  insignia  and  maintained  the  court  etiquette 
and  provincial  administration  of  Persia,  yet  both  he  and  his  cour- 
tiers remained  Greeks,  and  could  not  transform  themselves  into 
Asiatics.  His  successors  in  Asia,  the  Seleucidse,  were  still  more 
averse  to  the  old  customs  of  the  empire.  They  therefore  removed 
their  residence  and  the  capital  of  the  empire  from  Babylon,  which 
at  that  time  was  still  highly  flourishing,  so  far  west  as  Antioch ;  and 
tried  to  introduce  Greek  manners  and  despotic  centralized-civiliza- 
tion,  into  the  provinces  adjoining  the  seat  of  dominion.  The  out- 
lying Satrapies  could  not  long  be  kept  in  subjection:  and  during  the 
war  between  Antiochus  Theos  and  Ptolemy  Philadelphus  of  Egypt, 
Arsaces  the  Satrap  stirred  up  the  Parthians  (256  B.C.),  and  at  the 
head  of  his  Scythian  horsemen  established  the  Parthian  empire  in 
opposition  to  the  Greek  Seleucidse,  who  could  not  hold  the  country 
beyond  the  Tigris.  But  Arsaces  did  not  go  back  to  the  Achseme- 
nian  institutions:  he  kept  the  Arian  Persians  in  subjection,  who  from 
the  time  of  Cyrus  to  Alexander  had  been  the  rulers  of  the  Empire : 
his  realm  might  easier  be  characterized  as  the  revival  of  the  Scythian 
empire  of  Astyages.  The  Parthians  had  no  indigenous  art  of  their 
own :  according  to  Lucian,  they  were  6'u  <piXoxaXoi,  not  friends  of  art,183 
and  they  had  to  borrow  their  artistic  forms  from  their  neighbors, 
just  as  the  Shemitic  nations  had  clone  before  them. 

"While  assuming  the  empire,  they  copied  the  Greek  language  and 

the  Greek  types  of  the  Seleu- 
cidse on  their  coins ;  and  the 

portraits  of  Arsaces  I.  [58], 

B.  c.  256,  and  of  (Phraates  I.) 

Arsaces  V.  [59],  b.  c.  190- 

165,  on  their  silver  coins  in 

the    British    Museum,    can 

scarcely    be     distinguished 

from  Greek  coins,  as  regards 

art:  but  the  globular  shape 

of  the    Parthian  skull  cha-  absaoes  V. 

racterizes   them   sufficiently 

163  Lucian,  de  domo,  5. 


Fig.  58. 


Fig.  59. 


THE      ART     OF     THE     GREEKS. 


171 


Fig.  60. 


Fi<j.  61. 


Aksaces  XII. 


Aksaces     XIX. 


as  not  Hellenic.     The  conquest  of  the  Syrian  Empire  by  the  Romans 
soon  cut  off  the  influence  of  Hellenism,  and  isolated  the  Parthians, 

whose  art  relapsed  gradu- 
ally into  their  original  bar- 

harism.  The  portrait  of  Ar- 

saces  XH.  [60]  (Phraates 

IH.),  B.C.  50-60,  belongs 

to   the  beginning  of  the 

decline  of  art,  though  this 

king  was  a  contemporary 

of  Lucullus,  Pompey,  and 

Julius     Csesar.      Arsaces 

the    XlXth    [61],  (Volo- 

geses  rV\,  a.  d.  196)  ex- 
hibits a  rudeness  as  if  all  the  traditions  of  art  had  become  forgotten. 
Still,  he  was  a  contemporary  of  the  emperor  Commodus.  One  genera- 
tion after  him  we  see  a  new,  national,  Arian  art  reviving  in  Persia 
under  the  Sassanides. 

Similar  causes  led  to  similar  results  in  the  Crimea,  or  as  the 
ancients  called  it,  in  the  Taurian  or  Cimmerian  Chersonesus. 
Greek  colonies  from  Heraclea  and  Miletus  established  themselves 
here  among  the  aboriginal  barbarians,  and 
introduced  art  and  civilization.  Kings  of 
these  nations  stood  in  friendly  intercourse 
with  Athens  and  Byzantium,  who  used  to 
buy  here  their  corn ;  until  Mithridates  the 
Great  [62],  king  of  Pontus,  occupied  the 
country  (in  108  b.  c.)  which  was  to  become 
the  scene  of  his  suicide.  His  portrait  with 
the  rich  flowing  hair,  probably  a  copy  from 
a  statue  representing  him  driving  a  cha- 
riot,181 belongs  to  the  wonders  of  Grecian  art. 
_  The  Greek  dynasty  of  Mithridates,  in  the 
Crimea,  died  off  in  the  second  generation  with  Asander ;  and  was 
succeeded  by  a  long  series  of  indigenous  kings,  who,  without  any 
historical  importance,  maintained  their  sway  down  to  the  4th  century 
of  our  era.  During  their  reign  the  Greek  colonies  of  Panticapreum, 
Chersonnesus,Phanagoria,and  Gorgippia,  lost  their  Hellenic  charac- 
ters by  the  continuous  immigration  of  barbarians ;  and  all  the  tradi- 
tions of  art  disappeared  little  by  little  among  the  half-breed  inhabi- 
tants of  the  country, — until  all  Grecian  blood,  and  with  it,  civiliza- 
tion, became   absorbed  by  intercourse  with  the  barbarians.     The 


Fig.  62. 


Mithridates. 


184  Visconti,  Iconographie,  ii.  p.  182;  note  4,  Milan  edition. 


172 


THE    ART    OF    THE    GREEKS. 


following  likenesses  of  Sauromates  I.  [63]  (13-17  B.  a),  Rhescuporis 
II.  [64]  under  Domitian,  and  Rhescuporis  III.  [65],  (212-219),  from 
their  coins  in  the  British  Museum,  show  the  progressing  rudeness  of 


Fig.  63. 


Fig.  64. 


Fig.  65. 


Sauromates. 


Rhescuporis  II. 


Rhescuporis  III. 


the  representations,  as  well  as  the  ebbing  of  Greek  blood  among  a 
world  of  "barbarians,"  who,  according  to  their  features,  belonged 
to  the  Slavonic  race. 

We  might  have  given  equally  instructive  specimens  of  the  power 
and  successive  extinction  of  Hellenism  in  Thrace,  Cilicia,  Adiabene, 
— from  the  coins  of  those  countries,  —  clearly  proving  that  foreign 
art  cannot  maintain  itself  among  unartistical  races  for  any  length  of 
time,  but  must  decline  and  cease  so  soon  as  the  artistical  race  which 
imported  it  has  become  thoroughly  amalgamated  with,  and  has 
merged  into,  the  bulk  of  the  natives. 


VII. 


•THE    ART    OF    ROME. 


At  the  time  of  the  revival  of  letters,  when  the  attention  of  the 
scholars  and  princes  of  Italy  was  for  the  first  time  turned  towards  the 
remains  of  antiquity,  all  the  statues  and  reliefs  found  in  the  peninsula 
were  taken  for  Roman ;  and  the  antiquaries  liked  to  explain  any 
antique  representation  from  Livy's  history,  and  Ovid's  metamor- 
phoses. Grecian  life  was  at  that  time  nearly  unknown ;  the  study 
of  Greek  literature  remained  subordinate  to  that  of  Roman ;  and 
the  works  of  antiquity  were  regarded  as  illustrations  of  tbe  Roman 
classics.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  Winckelman  and  his  philosophi- 
cal school  applied  a  deeper  criticism  to  the  relics  of  ancient  art,  treat 
ing  them  as  equal  in  importance  to  the  literary  remains  of  classical 
antiquity,  a  reactionary  notion  spread  all  over  Europe,  that  the 
Romans  had  no  national  art  at  all ;  and  the  father  of  scientific  archse- 


THE    ART    OF    ROME.  173 

ology,  "Winckelnian  himself,  says:185  "I  defy  those  who  speak  of  the 
Roman  style  of  art  to  describe  its  peculiarities  or  to  determine  its 
character."  About  this  time  It  was  proved  with  considerable  display 
of  erudition  that  fine  arts  were  paid,  but  not  honored,  at  Rome.  Plu- 
tarch was  cited,  who  says  in  sober  earnest  that,  however  we  might 
admire  the  Olympian  Jupiter,  nobody  would  wish  to  become  Phi- 
dias :186  and  Petronius  also,187  who,  though  speaking  satirically,  still 
expressed  the  common  Roman  feeling  by  saying,  that '  a  nugget  of 
gold  is  more  beautiful  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man,  than  anything 
produced  by  those  foolish  Greeks,  Apelles  and  Phidias.'  Accordingly, 
it  was  believed  that  all  the  Roman  sculptures  are  the  work  of  Greeks, 
mostly  freed-men,  who  lived  in  that  capital  of  the  old  world.  Such 
views  were  quite  in  keeping  with  the  prevalent  idea  that  Roman  and 
Greek  mythology  was  altogether  identical.  The  monuments  of 
Rome,  however,  were  soon  more  thoroughly  sifted ;  and  a  number  of 
works  of  art  were  discovered  at  Pompeii,  nearly  all  of  them  of 
Italian  workmanship, — and  that,  between  the  emperor  Augustus 
(under  whom  the  town  was  rebuilt,  after  having  been  nearly  destroyed 
by  an  earthquake),  and  the  emperor  Titus,  under  whom  it  was 
buried.  Archaeologists  are,  therefore,  now  enabled  to  fix  more 
precisely  the  peculiarities  and  the  character  of  the  Roman  style ; 
although  we  must  acknowledge  that  it  is  but  a  slight  modification  of 
Greek  art.  The  original  Romans  had  no  feeling  for  fine  art ;  they 
were  the  offspring  of  unartistical  Umbrians  and  Sabines,  with  an 
admixture  of  Etruscans,  who  themselves  possessed  only  a  varnish  of 
art  superinduced.  The  few  monuments  which  adorned  republican 
Rome  before  the  conquest  of  Grsecia  Magna, — the  statues  of  the 
Capitol  and  the  efligies  of  the  kings — were  without  exception  of  Tus- 
can workmanship ;  so  were  their  copper-coinage,  their  house-furni- 
ture, their  earthenware  and  bronze  vases.  The  Romans  never  vied 
with  their  neighbors  either  in  mechanical  skill  or  in  artistical  feeling ; 
their  only  task  was  conquest  and  aggrandizement.  "When  at  last, 
by  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  luxury  and  desire  of  display  intro- 
duced a  yearning  for  works  of  art,  and  that  statues  and  pictures  began 
to  play  an  important  part  at  all  the  public  sbows,  triumphs  and  enter- 
tainments, it  was  easier  to  plunder  the  provinces  and  to  fill  Rome 
with  the  most  celebrated  treasures  of  art  from  the  temples  and 
market-places  of  Greece,  than  to  get  them  executed  by  native  artists 
on  the  Tiber  itself.  Still,  the  growing  demand  and  failing  supply  at 
length  fostered  art  at  Rome ;  and  though  the  artists  were  mostly  of 
foreign  extraction, — for  it  was  not  respectable  for  a  Roman  to  be  a 

i85  Cabinet  Slosch,  p.  397.  1S6  Vita  Periclis.  18'  Satyrkon,  c.  88. 


174  THE    ART    OF    ROME. 

sculptor  —  Roman  nationality  impressed  its  stamp  on  the  coins  and 
gems,  reliefs  and  statues,  marbles  and  bronzes,  of  tbe  time  of  the 
Emperors.     The  principal  features  of  Roman  art  are  a  somewhat 
ponderous  dignity,  and  a  want  of  poetical  inspiration,  but  withal  a 
close  imitation  of  native,  national  truthfulness,  and  great  regard  for 
individuality;  without  that  Greek  freshness,  freedom  and  harmony, 
which  rouse   in  the  beholder  the  consciousness  of  the  divine  nature 
of  our  soul.     The  composition  of  the  Roman  works  of  art  is  heavy, 
the  execution  often  over-polished  and  empty.     "Whilst  the  Greek 
artist  selected  his  subjects  from  mythology,  the  Roman  liked  to  re- 
present sacrifices,  triumphal  processions,  military  marches,  battles, 
and  "  allocutions,"  marriage-feasts  and  other  scenes  of  domestic  life. 
The  Greek  idealized  the  features  of  great  men ;  the  Roman  did  not 
ennoble  the  ugliness  of  old  Tiberius,  the  idiocy  of  Domitian,  and 
the  ferocious  looks  of  Commodus  and  Caracalla.     The  Greek  made 
scarcely  any  distinction,  in  sculpture,  between  the  Greek  and  the 
barbarian — the  same  idealism  surrounds  them  both,  and  assimilates 
them  to  one  another;  the  Roman  artist  made  a  charaeteristical  dif- 
ference between  enemies  of  Rome  and  the  civis  Romanus.    Still,  at  the 
time  of  the  Emperors,  the  Roman  type  itself  had  ceased  to  be  con- 
stant.   Citizenship  having  been  extended  to  half  a  world,  barbarians 
constituted  the  bulk  of  the  army,  and  their  equally-barbarian  officers 
were  raised  first  into  the  Senate,  then  to  the  imperial  throne.  Accord- 
ingly, the  artists  of  Rome  gave,  on  the  whole,  less  importance  to  the 
type  than  to  the  costume  of  the  foreign  hostile  nations,  by  which 
alone  they  differed  from  the  mongrel  Romans,  who  then  represented 
a   cosmopolitan  amalgam   of  all  the   white   races.     On  the   great 
cameos  of  tbe  time  of  Augustus  and  Tiberius,  at  Vienna  and  Paris 
(which,  by  their  dramatic  and  picturesque  composition  of  the  groups, 
materially  differ  from  Greek  reliefs),  the  Pannonian  and  Vindelician 
prisoners  have  no  individual  features;  nor  is  the  statue  of  the  "river 
Jordan  "  on  the  triumphal  arch  of  the  emperor  Titus  characterized 
by  a  Shemitic  physiognomy ;  but,  on  the  column  and  arch  of  Trajan, 
wbich  contains  tbe  best  of  all  the  Roman  works  of  art,  we  easily 
recognise  the  Dacian  [70]  whose  features  are  perpetuated  in  the  Wal- 
lachian  of  our  days.     In  the  dying  gladiator  of  the  Capitol,  and  on 
the  sarcophagus  of  the  Vigna  Ammendola,188  we  see  the  Celtic  Gaul 
[71]  represented;  and  Mr.  Gottling  recognises  an  ancient  German 
[69]  in  the  statue  of  a  prisoner  which  adorned  a  triumphal  arch  at 
Rome. 

After  the   eclectic   idealism  prevalent  under  the  reign   of  the 
Emperor  Hadrian,   we   no   longer  find   any   endeavor  to  fix  the 

186  Monumenli  Inedili  dell'  Institute  Archeologica  di  Roma,  1,  PI. 


THE    ART    OF    ROME. 


175 


national  peculiarities  of  foreign  nations  on  monuments  of  art.  The 
Teutonic  Markomans  on  the  columns  of  Antoninus,  the  Turanian 
Parthians  on  the  arch  of  Septimus  Severus,  differ  only  by  their  cos- 
tume from  Dacians,  and  from  the  Roman  soldiers  who  fight  against 
them;  and  we  must  admit  that  the  pharaonic  Egyptian  artists 
remained  unsurpassed,  even  by  Greeks  and  Romans,  in  the  accuracy 
with  which  they  observed  and  rendered  the  national  type  of  all  the 
tribes  with  which  they  happened  to  come  into  contact.  The  Assy- 
rians and  Persians  were  second  in  this  respect  to  the  Egyptians ;  still 
they  were,  on  the  whole,  faithful  enough,  whereas  with  the  Greeks  any 
national  peculiarity  merged  in  the  glorification  of  the  human  form : 
accordingly,  Egyptians  and  Asiatics  are  by  them  drawn  and  sculp- 
tured with  Hellenic  features.  The  Roman  is  by  far  more  truthful, 
but  his  art  is  short-lived.  Before  Augustus  it  is  either  Etruscan  or 
Greek ;  after  Septimus  Severus  it  loses  its  national  character,  and 
step  by  step  transforms  itself  into  the  Byzantine  Christian.  Two 
centuries  carry  us  from  the  beginning  of  Roman  art  to  its  decay ; 
its  full  bloom  lasted  only  just  for  the  score  of  years  which  embraces 
the  reign  of  the  emperor  Trajan,  since  under  Hadrian  it  lost  its 
Roman  features,  and  was  swamped  by  an  elegant  and  refined  imita- 
tion of  every  style  of  art.  About  the  same  time  that  the  imperial 
throne  fell  into  the  hands  of  Asiatic  Syrians,  of  Africans,  Arabs,  and 
northern  barbarians,  Roman  art  became  barbarous,  and  revived  only 
when,  about  the  time  of  Justinian  and  his  successors,  a  new  nation- 
ality,—  the  Grseco-Byzantine — consolidated  and  crystallized  itself 
under  the  influences  of  Christianity  out  of  the  mixture  of  all  the 
races  in  the  Roman  empire. 

The  earliest  authentic  Roman  portrait 
we  know  is  the  likeness  of  P.  Cornelius 
Scipio  Africanus  [67].189  All  earlier  effi- 
gies were  either  not  portraits  at  all,  —  as 
for  instance,  the  seven  Tuscan  statues  of 
the  kings,  mentioned  in  the  old  authors, 
which  stood  before  the  Capitol,  —  or 
they  are  too  indistinct  to  be  of  use  for 
ethnology.  This  applies  to  the  heads 
we  see  on  the  family  coins  of  Rome,  upon 
which  the  magistrates  liked  to  perpetu- 
ate the  memory  of  illustrious  ancestors. 
None  of  these  silver  coins  are  anterior  to 
the  year  269  b.  c  ;  their   size  is  small 


Fig.  67. 


Scipio  Africanus. 


189  Visconti,  Iconographie  rornaine,  Paris,  1817,  pi.  Ill,  fig.  2. 


176 


THE    ART    OF    ROME. 


and  their  workmanship  little  artistical.  Besides,  we  know  from 
Pliny  that  the  family  pride  of  the  Romans  eared  more  for  the  names 
than  for  the  likenesses  of  their  ancestors.  The  admiral  complains 
that  whilst  the  original  wax-effigies  represented  the  great  men  such 
as  they  really  had  been  (they  were  probably  casts  of  the  faces  of  the 
deceased),  a  later  age  delighted  in  silver  busts  and  in  the  workman- 
ship of  great  masters  (probably  Greeks,  and  given  to  idealizing), 
without  regard  to  the  likeness.  Pliny's  complaint  cannot  apply  to 
the  portrait  of  Scipio,  which  is  entirely  individual,  and  of  that  stern 
and  energetic  cast  which  fully  expresses  the  Roman  character. 
Scipio  may  be  taken  for  a  good  specimen  of  the  Roman  patrician 
type;  for,  at  his  time  the  aristocracy  had  not  yet  lost  its  national 
purity  by  the  admixture  of  foreign  blood.  Not  less  characteristic 
is  the  head  of  Agrippa  [68], — the  friend,  minister  and  son-in-law  of 
Augustus,  and  maternal  ancestor  of  the  emperors  Caligula,  Claudius 
and  Nero.  Next  to  the  Roman  type  represented  by  these  two  highly 
expressive  portraits,  let  us  consider  the  features  of  their  enemies. 
Pig.  69  is  the  bust  of  a  "barbarian"  found  in  Trajan's  forum,  now  iD 


Fig.  68. 


Fig.  69. 


Vipsanitjs  Aokippa,  [Pulszhy  coll.) 


Bakbakian. 


the  British  Museum.  Mr.  Combe,  in  his  description  of  the  ancient 
marbles  of  the  British  Museum,  after  adverting  to  the  feelings  of 
rage,  disappointment  and  revenge  strongly  marked  in  this  face, 
inclines  to  believe  that  the  head  was  intended  to  represent  Arminius 
the  German  hero,  who  defeated  Varus,  and  was  defeated  by  Germa- 
nicus.  Mr.  Gottling,  in  an  essay  which  has  become  very  popular  in 
Germany,  attributes  this  head  with  specious  reasons  to  Thumelicus, 
the  fighter  of  Ravenna,  son  of  Arminius.  "We  therefore  scarcely  err 
in  seeking  the  original  Teutonic  type  in  this  excellent  bust. 


THE     ART     OF    ROME. 


177 


Fig.  70. 


The  effigy  of  Decebalus, — prince  of  the  Dacians  [70],190  is  copied 
from  a  bas-relief  originally  belonging  to 
the  triumphal  arch  of  Trajan,  which  by  the 
addition  of  later  patchwork  has  been  trans- 
formed into  an  arch  in  honor  of  the 
emperor  Constantine.  The  effigy  is  pecu- 
liarly interesting  for  its  resemblance  to  the 
present  Wallachians,  true  descendants  of 
the  ancient  Dacians.  This  similitude 
between  the  Dacians  and  "Wallachians  is 
not  exclusively  confined  to  the  cast  of 
features  nor  to  the  costume,  since  we  see 
on  the  reliefs  of  the  column  of  Trajan, 
decorated  with    episodes    of   his   Dacian 

campaign,  that  even  this  moral  character  has  in  one  respect  remained 
the  same.  The  Romans  seem  to  have  been  peculiarly  struck  by  the 
ferocious  treatment  of  prisoners  among  these  Dacians;  and  they 
did  not  fail  to  represent  the  Dacian  females,  who  tortured  the  disarmed 
and  fettered  Romans  with  raving  brutality.  The  same  feature 
recurred  in  the  Hungarian  war  of  1849.  Hungarian  prisoners  were 
tortured  and  murdered  by  the  servile  Wallachian  population, — the 
females  being  always  the  most  cruel  among  them. 


Dacian. 


Fig.  71. 


"We  copy  the  head  of  a  Celtic  Gaul 
[71]  from  a  sarcophagus  found  in  the 
vineyard  Ammendola  at  Rome.  It 
is  characterized  by  a  peculiar  Gallic 
necklace  (torques),  and  by  angular 
expressive  features.  For  those  of  our 
readers  who  are  less  acquainted  with 
the  latest  archaeological  researches 
we  mention  the  fact,  that  the  cele- 
brated dying-Gladiator  of  the  Capitol 

has  been  recognized  to  be  a  Celt,  by  Celtic  Gaul. 

Nibby191  and  by  Raoul-Rochette. 

This  suggests  a  digression.  Having  given  the  earliest  effigy  of  a 
Celt,  we  feel  bound  to  copy  likewise  the  features  of  a  Norman,  in 
order  to  put  the  principal  ancestors  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  British 
Islands  and  of  North  America  side  by  side.  William  the  Conqueror 
lived  in  times  and  among  nations  unpropitious  to  art :  his  likeness, 
[72]  therefore,  cannot  be  peculiarly  characteristic.     It  is  taken  from 

190  Bellorius,  Veteres  Arms,  Rome,  1690,  PI.  44,  "Victoria  Dacica." 

191  Observazioni  sopra  la  slalua  del  Gladialore  moribondo:  —  Bulletin  universel,  Till,  1830, 
Aout. ;  compare  Pliny,  XXXIV.  19-24. 

12 


178 


THE    ART    OF    ROME. 


Fig.  72. 


WlLLELMT. 


the  celebrated  "Bayeux  tapestry,"192  which  is  contemporaneous  with 

this  king,  and  attributed  by  tradition 
to  the  needle  of  Mathilda,  queen  of  the 
conqueror.  "We  are  sorry  that,  together 
with  the  Norman  type,  we  are  unable 
to  give  a  standard  Anglo-Saxon  effigy; 
but  queen  Mathilda  does  not  seem  to 
have  remarked  any  peculiar  differ- 
ence between  these  two  different  na- 
tionalities; which,  indeed,  were  of 
the  same  Scandinavo-Teutonic  stock, 
— deduction  made  of  the  crowd  of 
continental  "flibustiers"  who  nocked  to 
the  colors  of  William,  and  who  were 
Normans  only  by  courtesy.  Accord- 
ingly, king  Harold,  on  the  Bayeux  tapestry,  resembles  his  cousin 
William,  with  the  slight  exception,  that  he  and  his  Anglo-Saxons 
wore  mustachios,  whereas  the  Normans  are  closely  shaved. 

We  continue.  If  it  should  now  be  asked  what  representations  of 
the  different  nationalities  of  old  have  to  prove  about  the  original 
"unity"  or  "diversity"  of  the  human  race,  we  point  to  the  unmistakable 
constancy  of  the  types  of  the  Egyptians,  Assyrians,  Wallachs,  Ne- 
groes, Jews, — which  are  at  the  present  day  exactly  such  as  were  repre- 
sented on  ancient  monuments, — and  quote  Dr.  Prichard's  words 
as  to  the  importance  of  this  fact :  "  If  it  should  be  found  that  within 
the  period  of  time  to  which  historical  testimony  extends,  the  distin- 
guishing characters  of  human  races  have  been  constant  and  undevi- 
ating,  it  would  become  a  matter  of  great  difficulty  to  reconcile  this 
conclusion  with  the  inferences  obtained  from  other  considera- 
tions." 193 

To  return  to  Roman  art.  Its  importance  stands  in  no  relation  to  its 
real  merits ;  it  had  a  marked  influence  not  only  over  early  Christian 
sculpture,  but  even  on  mediaeval  and  modern  art.  The  works  of 
Egypt,  Assyria,  and  Etruria,  belong  altogether  to  the  domain  of 
archaeology :  modern  artists  disdain  to  be  instructed  by  them,  although 
they  might  learn  from  them  that  no  style  of  art  ever  maintained 
itself  on  any  other  basis  than  nationality ; — but  they  cannot  emanci- 
pate themselves  from  Greek  and  principally  from  Roman  influences. 
It  belongs  to  the  peculiarities  of  our  age,  that,  whilst  the  purity  of  the 
plastical  forms  of  the  Greek  statues  could  not  fail  to  maintain  their 
importance  as  models  for  statuaries,  the  Roman  bas-relief  continues  to 

192  Vetusta  Monumenla,  Soc.  of  Antiquaries,  1822,  vi.  pi.  17. 

193  Researches,  vol.  iii.  p.  2,  edition  of  1837. 


ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS.  179 

be  imitated  by  our  sculptors.  They  prefer  its  crowded,  melo-drania- 
tic  groups,  and  the  slight  attempt  at  perspective  (by  raising  the 
figures  of  the  first  plan  and  gradually  depressing  those  of  the  second 
and  third),  to  the  graceful  and  simple  Greek  bas-relief,  which  is  regu- 
lated by  the  artistic  feeling  of  the  sculptor,  not  by  unartistical  rules, 
— for  instance,  on  the  friezes  of  the  Parthenon  and  of  the  Mausoleum. 
But,  we  ought  not  to  forget  that  the  sculptors  of  our  day  belong 
mostly  to  the  neo-Latin  nations :  and  being  imbued  with  the  spirit  of 
Roman  literature  in  preference  to  that  of  Greek,  they  feel  instinctively 
a  greater  attraction  towards  the  works  of  imperial  Rome,  than  of  re- 
publican Greece.  So,  too,  does  the  bulk  of  the  public ;  which  appre- 
ciates much  more  the  elegance  of  the  statues  of  the  Belvidere, — all 
of  them  works  of  the  Roman  period,  —  than  the  sublime  beauty  of 
the  Elgin  marbles,  and  the  chaste  drawing  on  some  vases  of  Etruria 
and  Grecia  magna. 

"We  have  now,  in  the  course  of  our  ethnological  survey  of  the 
history  of  art,  arrived  at  the  decay  of  the  nations  of  classical  anti- 
quity, and  reached  the  dawn  of  Christian  art.  "We  might  easily 
pursue  our  researches  down  to  the  present  day,  through  the  Byzantine 
period,  into  the  exclusively-national  art  of  Italy,  of  Germany,  of 
Spain,  of  France,  of  Belgium,  and  of  Holland;  but  the  characteristics 
of  all  these  "  schools,"  or  rather  nationalities,  of  painting,  are  so  well 
known  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  their  diversity.  The 
history  of  Christian  art  has  often  been  written,  and  leads  invariably 
to  the  result,  that  art  never  developed  itself  but  on  a  national  basis ; 
that  close  imitation  of  foreign  forms  never  could  impart  life  to  art;  and 
that  eclecticism  invariably  leads  to  destruction.  Accordingly,  the 
Academies  of  painting  and  sculpture,  founded  upon  eclecticism, 
and  rejecting  art's  national  development,  became  always  and  every- 
where the  tombstones  of  art. 


VIII.  —  ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 

The  time  has  not  yet  arrived  for  writing  the  history  of  the  indige- 
nous art  of  the  Red-race.  The  monuments  of  the  ante-Columbian 
civilization  of  America  but  little  regarded  in  their  country,  are 
excessively  rare  in  Europe.  There  are  but  few  persons,  either  in  the 
United  States  or  the  Spanish  republics,  who  care  for  antiquity.  The 
English  race  is  too  much  occupied  with  the  interests  of  the  present, 
the  Spanish  too  much  disturbed  with  fears  about  the  future,  and 
therefore,  both  too  unsettled  and  too  uncomfortable,  to  devote 
much  attention  to  the  relics  of  an  antiquity,  which,  however  impor- 


180  ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 

tant  for  the  philosopher  and  the  historian  of  human  civilization,  has 
neither  the  charms  and  beauty  of  the  Grseco-Roman  period,  nor  the 
historical  interest  of  Egyptian,  Assyrian,  or  early  Christian  art.  The 
Red  nations,  of  whose  works  we  speak,  are  strangers  to  us ;  their 
civilization  remained  entirely  unconnected  with  our  history;  and 
was  too  different  from,  and  too  inferior  to,  the  development  of  the 
Japetides,  Shemites,  and  Turanians.  Even  Chinese  art  has  a  greater 
chance  of  becoming  the  object  of  study,  than  the  monuments  of  the 
mound-builders,  of  the  Toltecs  and  Aztecs  of  Mexico  and  Central 
America,  and  of  the  Quichuas  and  Aymaras  of  Peru  and  the  Lake 
of  Titicaca.  China  is  still  a  mighty  empire ;  its  civilization,  how- 
ever strange,  cannot  be  ignored  by  us;  and  the  monuments  of 
Chinese  art  may  facilitate  a  correct  appreciation  of  the  institutions, 
the  religion  and  morals,  of  more  than  three  hundred  millions  of 
men, — with  whom,  at  the  same  time,  traffic  is  profitable. 

American  art,  on  the  other  hand,  is  in  no  way  linked  to  the  present 
age.  The  refined  amateur  is  repelled  by  the  homeliness  of  most  of 
the  artistical  relics,  which  the  historian  is,  as  yet,  unable  to  connect 
with  certain  dates  and  personages.  This  is  the  reason  why  but  very 
few  persons  care  for  Mexican,  Central  American,  and  Peruvian  anti- 
quity ;  and  how  it  comes  to  pass,  that  among  all  the  public  Museums 
of  Europe  there  are  but  two,  the  Louvre  at  Paris,191  and  the  British 
Museum  in  London,  which  systematically  admit  American  monu- 
ments into  their  treasuries  of  art.  Of  private  collections  I  know  but 
four :  the  Central  American  antiquities  at  the  country-seat  of  the 
late  Mr.  Freudenthal,  in  Moravia  (Austria),  who  fell  a  victim  to  his 
zeal  in  searching  for  antiquities  in  the  tropical  climate  of  Guatemala, 
and  died  soon  after  his  return  to  Vienna ;  the  extensive  collection 
of  Mr.  Uhde  at  Handschuhsheim,  near  Heidelberg  (Grand  duchy 
Baden);  and  the  two  Mexican  and  Peruvian  cabinets  of  MM. 
Jomard  and  Allier  at  Paris.  M.  Adrien  de  Longperier  published, 
in  1852,  a  Notice  of  the  monuments  exhibited  in  the  American  Hall 
of  the  Louvre,  from  which  we  see  that  it  contains : 

I. — 680  relics  of  Mexican  art,  consisting  of  mythological  statuettes, 
vases,  gems,  seals,  utensils,  instruments  of  music,  weights  and  mea- 
sures in  volcanic  stone,  granite,  basalt,  terra-cotta,  bronze,  crystal, 
obsidian,  jade,  jasper,  and  wood. 

n.  —  A  few  fragments  from  Palenque. 

HI.  —  About  three  hundred  statuettes  and  vases,  implements  and 

194  The  Louvre  has,  "within  the  last  few  years,  acquired  the  Mexican  Antiquities  of  M. 
Latour  Allard,  published  in  Lord  KiDgsborough's  great  work;  received  as  gifts  the  equally 
important  Peruvian  antiquities  of  Mons.  Augrand,  together  with  the  smaller  collections  of 
Messrs.  Massieu  de  Clairval,  Audifred,  V.  Schb'elcher,  and  several  other  gentlemen. 


ART    OF     AMERICAN     NATIONS.  181 

woollen  fabrics  of  Peru,  from  Cuzco,  Lambazeque,  Quiloa,  Bodegon, 
Arica  and  Truxillo. 

IV. — Some  twenty  artistical  objects  from  the  Antilles  and  Hayti. 

The  collections  of  the  British  Museum  have  not  yet  been  described 
and  published.  Huddled  together  as  they  are,  in  one  of  the  smaller 
rooms,  with  Hindoo,  Burmese,  Japanese,  and  Chinese  idols,  and 
with  the  implements  and  curiosities  of  the  South-Sea  isles,  they  fail 
to  attract  the  attention  of  the  visitors.  The  Mexican  Cabinet  con- 
sisting principally  in  pottery,  or  in  statuettes  and  reliefs  in  terra 
cotta,  is  one  of  the  most  extensive,  and  shows  that  the  traditions  of 
Aztec  art  long  survived  the  conquest  by  Cortez ;  since  we  find  a 
Spanish  Viceroy  moulded  in  clay  by  a  native  artist,  who  did  not  fail 
to  distort  the  features  of  this  Spanish  hidalgo  into  the  typical  Mexi- 
can forms,  no  less  than  to  give  him  their  American  cast  of  skull, 
and  of  the  cheek-bones  !  The  Peruvian  antiquities  are  likewise  ex- 
clusively of  baked  clay ;  some  of  them  gems  of  native  art.  The 
Museum  might  easily  enrich  its  American  treasures;  for,  as  I 
learned  from  the  most  reliable  sources,  many  Peruvian  gold  and 
silver  idols  find  their  way  into  the  Bank  of  England  and  the  Royal 
Mint,  where  they  are  melted  down ;  since  they  have  no  artistic,  if 
great  archaeological,  and  still  greater,  it  would  seem,  monetary  value. 

Many  American  Antiquities  were  published  in  the  extensive,  and 
more  or  less  costly  works,  of  Kingsborough,  Humboldt,  Lenoir, 
Warden,  Tschudi,  Rivero,Vf  aldeck,  Catherwood,  d'Orbigny,  Stephens, 
Norman,  Brantz  Mayer,  Bartlett,  and  Squier ;  but,  failing  to  interest 
the  public  in  the  same  way  as  Asiatic  and  European  antiquities, 
they  remained  unknown  beyond  the  circle  of  some  ethnological 
scholars,  so  that  few  persons  are  aware  of  the  extent  and  the  artisti- 
cal importance  of  the  Monuments  of  America.  We  have,  in  the 
following  wood-cuts,  selected  the  most  characteristic  and  best  sculp- 
tured specimens  of  the  ante-Columbian  art  of  the  new  world,  in  hope 
that  they  may  become  the  means  of  exciting  a  greater  interest  for 
them  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  As  it  is  the  object  of  illustra- 
tions to  instruct  by  view,  as  well,  and  often  more  than  by  explication, 
we  add  but  few  words  to  them. 

The  great  majority  of  the  ancient  monuments  of  America  will  for- 
ever remain  unconnected  with  history,195 — mysterious  relies  of  a  civi- 

195  [I  perceive  that  an  anonymous  "viator"  advertises  in  the  National  Intelligencer  (Wash- 
ington, D.  C,  18th  October,  1856),  a  forthcoming  volume,  wherein  "more  than  twenty 
gentlemen,  embracing  the  bench,  the  bar,  the  clergy,  and  members  of  the  medical  profes- 
sion, have  come  forward  " — all  in  Western  Virginia,  too — and  are  actually  going  to  vouch 
for  the  indubitable  authenticity  of  that  "canard"  —  so  famous,  among  archteologists,  as 
Mr.  Schoolcraft's  Ohio  pebble,  engraved  in  22  different  alphabets  at  "Grave  Creek  flat!" 

To  facilitate  its  reappearance  in  good  society,  no  less  than  to  increase  the  receipts  of 


182  ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 

lization  which  they  alone  record  and  expound.  Mexican  antiquities, 
however,  will  soon  receive  an  additional  importance  by  the  publica- 
tion (as  we  learn  from  his  friend  Mr.  E.  Geo.  Squier)  of  M.  Aubin, 
the  French  savant  who  has  devoted  a  life  of  study  to  the  researches 
on  the  Aztec  language  and  literature;  having,  by  a  residence  of  thir- 
teen years  in  Mexico,  and  by  the  lucky  discovery  of  the  collections 
and  MSS.  of  Botturini,  become  able  to  obtain  all  the  materials  and 
the  information  for  deciphering  them,  so  as  to  elucidate  the  history 
of  the  Aztec  empire  previous  to  Cortez.  A  few  years  hence,  the 
ante-Columbian  history  of  Mexico  will  be  as  accessible  to  us  as  the 
early  annals  of  any  European  nation;  for  hieroglyphical  documents 
are  not  wanting  which  contain  this  information :  whilst  the  researches 
of  Botturini,  which  in  the  past  century  were  cut  short  by  the  Span- 
ish Inquisition,  have  been  now  resumed  by  M.  Aubin ;  and,  in  his 
hands,  have  afforded  the  key  for  reading  these  sealed  books.196 

The  hunter  tribes  of  America  evince  no  feeling  for  plastical  beauty ; 
yet  withal,  like  the  Turks  and  the  Celts,  they  have  a  considerable 
talent  for  decorative  designs,  and  some  perceptions  of  the  harmony 
of  colors.  The  originality  and  ornamental  combination  of  their  bead- 
work  and  embroidery  is  sufficiently  known,  but  they  always  fail  in 
rendering  the  human  form.  Ear  higher  was  the  civilization  of  that 
race  which  preceded  them  in  the  trans- Alleghanian  States.     "We  call 

that  "  Museum,"  I  give  this  announcement  a  wider  circulation  than  the  threatened  book  is 
destined  to  obtain,  by  referring  the  curious  to  Squier's  "Observations  on  the  Aboriginal 
Monuments  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,"  New  York,  8vo.,  1847,  pp.  71-9  (Extract  from  the 
Transactions  of  the  American  Ethnological  Society,  vol.  ii.)  ;  and  to  Types  of  Mankind,  pp. 
652-3.— G.  R.  G] 

196  Among  recent  articles  which  show  how  this  new  school  of  American  archaeologists 
augments, — consult  Squier,  "  Aztec  Picture-writing  "  [New  York  Tribune,  Nov.  24, 1852) : — 
Bartlett,  "  The  Aboriginal  Semi-civilization  of  the  Great  California  Basin,  with  a  Refuta- 
tion of  the  popular  theory  of  the  Northern  Origin  of  the  Aztecs  of  Mexico "  (New  York 
Herald,  April  4,  1854): — Aubin,  "Lang.  Americaine.  Langue,  Litterature  et  Ecriture 
Mexicaines  "  (Encyclopedic  du  XIX"'  Siecle,  Tome  xxvi.,  Supplement,  pp.  500-7) : — Squier, 
" Les  Indiens  Guatusos  du  Nicaragua"  (Alhenmum  Francais,  22  B^cembre,  1855): — Prisse 
d'Avennes,  "Honduras  —  AmeYique  centrale  (L' Illustration,  Paris,  8  De'cenibre,  1855):  — 
Brasseur  de  Boiirbourg,  "  Letter  from  Rabinal — Department  of  Vera  Paz  "  (London  Alhc- 
nceum,  Dec.  8,  1855) : — Idem,  "  Notes  d'un  Voyage  dans  l'AmeYique  centrale — Lettre  a,  M. 
Alfred  Maury"  (Nouvelles  Annales  des  Voyages,  Paris,  Aout,  1855): — with  Squier's  cri- 
tique on  said  letter  (Op.  cit.,  D6c.  1855): — Trubner,  "The  New  Discoveries  in  Guatemala," 
and  "Central  American  Archaeology"  {London  Athenccum,  12th  Jan.,  and  31st  May,  1856) ; 
since  enhanced  in  interest  by  Don  Jose  Antonio  Urrutia's  "Discovery  of  additional  Mo- 
numents of  Antiquity  in  Central  America"  (Ibidem,  13  Dec.  1856).  The  new  work  of  Dr. 
Soherzer  brings  another  distinguished  pioneer  into  the  field;  and  we  have  reason  to  hope 
that  much  light  will  be  thrown  upon  the  Indian  languages  of  New  Mexico,  California,  &c, 
by  the  conjoint  researches  of  two  gentlemen  eminently  qualified  for  the  task — Mr.  John  R. 
Bartlett  (late  U.  S.  Boundary  Commissioner  to  Mexico,  and  now  Secretary  of  State  for 
Rhode  Island),  and  Prof.  Wm.  W.  Turner  (of  the  U.  S.  Patent  Office,  Washington,  D.  C). 


ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 


18 


8 


Fig.  73. 


them  "mound-builders,"  from  the  regular  fortifications  which  they 
have  erected  in  several  of  the  western  and  southern  States.197  The 
Natchez,  destroyed  by  the  French  of  Louisiana,  in  the  last  century, 
seem  to  have,  in  part,  belonged  to  them.  A  most  characteristic, — we 
may  say  artistically-beautiful — head  [73]  in  red  pipe-clay,  the  work- 
manship of  these  unknown  mound-builders,  dug  up  and  published 
by  Squiee,,198  exhibits  the  peculiar  In- 
dian features  so  faithfully,  and  with 
such  sculptural  perfection,  that  we  can- 
not withhold  our  admiration  from  their 
artistical  proficiency.  It  proves  three 
things :  1st,  That  these  "  mound-build- 
ers" were  American  Indians  in  type : — 
2d,  That  time  (age  ante-Columbian,  but 
otherwise  unknown,)  has  not  changed 
the  type  of  this  indigenous  group  of 
races:— and  3d,  That  the  "mound-build- 
ers "  were  probably  acquainted  with  no 
other  men  but  themselves.  In  every 
way  confirming  the  views  of  the  author 
of  Crania  Americana. 

The  monuments  of  Mexico  partake  more  of  the  decorative  charac- 
ter, and  we  cannot  but  admire  their  ingenuity  in  making  use  of  the 
most  refractory  materials  for  artistical  purposes.  The  following  three 
heads  were  all  published  by  the  various  authors  of  Antiquit.es  Mexi- 
eaines.  Fig.  74,199  carved  of  wood,  is  remarkable  for  its  finish  and 
elegance;  fig.  75 m  belongs  to  a  statue  of  volcanic  stone;  fig.  76 m 
is  of  smaragdite,  a  green,  hard,  gem-like  stone,  which  cannot,  by  our- 
selves, be  worked  otherwise  than  by  steel  or  bronze,  and  requires  the 
action  of  the  wheel  and  emery.     All  of  them  are  characterized  by  the 


MoUND-BUILDEB. 


19'  [Whilst  correcting  proof,  I  learn,  with  the  deepest  regret,  of  the  demise,  at  New  York 
on  the  14th  Dec.  1856,  of  Dr.  Hermann  E.  Ludewig  ;  whom  I  saw  quite  well  there  last  Oc- 
tober. Our  mutual  friend  Mr.  Trubner  will  deplore,  with  our  fellow-students,  this  sudden 
loss  the  more,  as  he  has  in  press  the  crowning  monument  of  Ludewig's  arduous  labors — the 
"Bibliography  of  American  Aboriginal  Linguistics"  —  the  MSS.  of  which  we  looked  over 
together,  in  London. — G.  R.  G.] 

198  Ancient  Monuments  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  1848,  p.  245,  fig.  145. 

193  Antiquites  Mexicaines  (Relation  des  Trois  Exped.  du  Cap.  Dupaix,  1805-7,  dessins  de 
Castatteda — par  Lenoir,  Warden,  Farcy,  Baradere,  St.  Priest,  &c,  Paris,  2  vols,  folio, 
1834)— pi.  lxiii.,  fig.  121,  p.  53— 2nde  ExpeU 

»»  Idem,  pi.  vi.  p.  7— Ire  ExpeU 

201  Idem,  Supplement,  pi.  vii.  p.  13 — 3me  Expe"d. : — compare  also  Humboidt  ( Vues  des 
Cordilleras,  Paris,  fol.  1810,  pi.  66),  "Tete  graved  en  pierre  dure  paries  Indiens  Muys- 
cas;"  (Researches,  tr.  Williams,  London,  8vo.,  1814,  ii.  p.  205);  who  considers  the  stone  a 
Bmaragdite,  and  the  workmanship  New  Grenadian. 


184 


ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 


peculiar  features  of  the  Central  American  group  of  the  Red-men, 

Fig.  74.  Fig.  75. 


Mexican  Musical  Instrument. 


Fig  76. 


Mexican  Statue. 


Mexican  Gem. 


in  the  formation  of  the  skull,  as  well  as  by  their 
high  cheek-bones. 

The  drawings  of  the  Mexican  hieroglyphieal 
and  pictorial  MSS.  are  of  a  conventional  and 
decorative    character.      The    following    group 
from  the  astronomical  Fejervary   codex,   is   in- 
serted to  represent  the  state  in  which  they  por- 
tray the  phases  of  the  moon,  according  to  Aztec 
mythology.      We    see    first  the   sun   aud   the 
moon  quarrelling  [given  in  wood-cut  77]:  the 
next  group,   in  the   original   MS.,   shows  the 
defeat  of  the  moon,  which  in  the  third  group  is 
swallowed  by  the  sun ;  the  fourth  figure  represents  the  triumphant 
sun;  in.  the  fifth,  the  conqueror  (very  unsesthetically)  spits  the  head 
of  the  moon  out,  as  symbol  of  the  first  quarter.202 

We  merely  figure  one  specimen:  the  subject  being  hardly  intelli- 
gible without  the  colors  of  the  original. 

Of  a  higher  importance  are  the  antiquities  of  Central  America ; 
though  a  comparison  of  the  different  publications  on  the  ruins  of 
Palenque  clearly  shows,  that  a  faithful  copy  of  those  monuments 
belongs  still  to  the  desiderata  of  archaeology.  The  idiotic  head  [78] 
published  by  Waldeck,203  with  the  peculiar  artificial  deformation  of  the 

202  Kingsboeouqh,  Antiquities  of  Mexico,  iii. ;  "  MS.  in  the  possession  of  Gabriel  Fejer- 
vary"—figs.  3,  5,  6,  7. 

203  Voyage  Piltoresque  et  ArcMologique  dans  la  province  de  Yucatan,  1834-6,  Paris,  fol. 
1837 ;  pi.  xxii.  p.  105 — "  Relief  astronomique  de  Palenque'  " — (differently  given  in  Del  Rio, 
Description,  1822,  pi.  3.) 


ART    OP    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 
Fig.  77. 


185 


Mexican  Illuminated  MS. 


Fig.  78. 


Fig.  79. 


Palenque-kelief. 

skull ;  and  the  terra-cotta  idol,  [179]  ;m 
— both  from  Yucatan, — show  a  ten- 
dency towards  decorative  art ;  which 
treats  even  the  human  form  merely 
for  ornamental  purposes,  and  there- 
fore lays  a  peculiar  stress  on  the  head- 
dress, eyebrows,  wrinkles,  and  other 
accessories,  in  preference  to  the  purity 

of  the  principal  forms.  In  fact  we  may  characterize  the  reliefs  of 
Palenque  by  this  peculiarity,  which  we  observe  in  a  smaller  degree 
on  Mexican  reliefs. 

The  few  monuments  of  Guatemala  hitherto  published,  among  those 
discovered  by  Squier,  are  of  a  purer  taste  and  higher  artistical  cha- 
racter. This  inedited  colossal  head  [80],  obligingly  communicated  to 
us  from  his  well-stored  portfolio,  found  by  him  at  Yulpates,  in  1853,  sur- 


2M  Idem,  pi.  xix. — "  Idole  et  Vase  en  terre  cuite.' 


186 


ART    OF    AMERICAN    NATIONS. 


Ms;.  80. 


passes  in  beauty  all  we  knew  before  of  the  art  of  the  Ked-raee.     The 

simplicity  of  design,  the  exqtiisite 
finish  of  execution,  and  the  earnest 
expression  of  the  head  in  question  (to 
which  our  wood-cut  does  not  do  ade- 
quate justice),  place  it  on  an  equal 
footing  with  the  productions  of  any 
Japetide  race.  Still,  the  Indian  charac- 
ter of  the  features  attests  sufficiently 
its  indigenous  origin.  We  owe  this 
gem  of  American  sculpture  to  the  libe- 
rality of  Mr.  Squier  ;  whose  name  is 
associated  with  so  many  important  re- 
searches and  enterprises,  that  he  has 
been  able  easily  to  transfer  to  us  the 
honor  of  publishing  the  best  of  all 
American  statuary.  To  it  we  add,  as 
specimens  of  Central  American  style, 
three  heads  from  one  of  his  published 
works.205 


GuATEMALIAN-IDOL. 


Fig.   81. 


Fig.  82. 


Fig.  83. 


NlCAKAGUAN. 


NlCAKAGUAN. 


NlCARAGBAN. 


We  copy  from  the  work  of  de  Eivero  and  ton  Tschudi,206  the  fol- 
lowing terra-cotta  head  [84],  as  a  specimen  of  Peruvian  art;  and,  in 
order  to  show  the  affinity  of  Indian  art  all  over  America,  we  com- 
pare it  with  a  Mexican  terra-cotta  head  [85].207  The  resemblance 
in  artistic  treatment  between  both  figures  is  most  striking. 

Tschudi,  with  an  exaggeration  easily  explicable  in  the  discoverer 
and  commentator  of  monuments  formerly  Unknown,  compares  his 
Peruvian  vase  to  any  Etruscan  work  of  pottery ;  but,  even  if  we  must 
dissent  from  his  view  in  respect  to  the  workmanship  of  the  head  pub- 

205  Nicaragua,  New  York,  1852 — No.  81,  fromi.,  p.  302,  "Idol  from  Momotombita,"— No. 
82,  from  ii.,  p.  62,  "Idols  at  Zapatero" — No.  83,  ii.,  p.  52,  same  sculptures. 

206  Anliffiiedades  Peruana.?,  Vienna,  4to.,  1851,  Atlas,  lamina  ix. — head  on  a  vase. 
291  A  nliquile's  Mexkaines,  2nde  Expedition,  pi.  xxiv.  fig.  71,  p.  20. 


ART    OF    AMERICAN     NATIONS.  187 

lished  by  him,  we  may  admit  the  high  proficiency  of  Peruvian  art, 
Fig.  84.  Fig-  85. 


Mexican  terra-cotta. 

when  we  behold  two  most  exquisite 
terra-eotta  heads  of  the  British  Mu- 
seum; which,  according  to  the  label 
on  them,  were  found  in  the  neigh- 
Peruvian  Vase.  borhood    of    Lake    Titicaca.     Both 

of  them  are  here  edited  for  the  first 
time.  The  male  head  [86]  compares  advantageously  with  works 
of  Egyptian  or  Etruscan  artisanship,  whilst  preserving  the  charac- 
ter of  the  Indian  race;  and  the  female  head  [87],  with  its  artificial 


Fig.  86. 


Fig.  87. 


Peruvian  Male. 


Peruvian  Female. 


deformity  of  the  skull,  gives  us  the  highest  idea  of  the  artistical 
endowments  of  the  Aymaras. 

These  few  specimens  of  the  indigenous  ante-Columbian  art  of 
America  show  sufficiently  the  constancy  of  the  Indian  type — as  pre- 
served now  in  the  very  geographical  province  whence  each  relic  has 


188  ON    SOME    OF    THE 

been  derived — during  all  the  historical  period  of  the  JSTew  "World,  and 
its  great  difference  from  Chinese  and  Japanese  works  of  art.  Could 
we  hope  that  the  monuments  of  Central  and  South  America  might 
attract  the  attention  and  excite  the  interest  of  more  American  scholars 
than  hitherto,  the  theory  of  the  Mongol  origin  of  the  Red-men  would 
soon  be  numbered  among  exploded  hypotheses,  —  to  be  forgotten, 
like  the  fond  illusions  of  Lord  Kingsborough  ;  who  succumbed  pre- 
maturely, 'tis  said,  fortuneless  in  pocket  and  aberrated  in  mind, 
owing  to  his  sincere  and  munificent  endeavors  to  deduce  "  American 
Indians"  from  the  falsely-supposed  "lost  Ten  Tribes  of  Israel." 

IX. ON    SOME     OF     THE     UNARTISTICAL    RACES. 

Count  de  Gobineau's  publication  on  the  Inequality  of  human 
races  m  is  certainly  a  work  sparkling  with  genius  and  originality,  if 
indulging  in  some  wild  hypotheses  not  supported  by  history.  By 
one  of  his  most  startling  assertions  he  derives  the  aptitude  for  art, 
among  all  the  nations  of  antiquity,  from  an  amalgamation  with  Black 
races.  For  him,  Egyptians,  Greeks,  Assyrians  and  Etruscans,  are 
half-breeds,  mulattoes !  "We  would  not  notice  this  strange  and  alto- 
gether-gratuitous hypothesis,  had  not  several  other  works — unscien- 
tific, but  important  by  the  intense  popularity  they  have  acquired, — 
held  out  the  expectation  that  the  Black  races  might,  after  all, 
turn  out  to  be  artistical,  and  hence  bring  about  a  new  era  of  art. 
Sober  history  does  not  encourage  such  dreams,  nor  can  the  past  of 
the  Black  races  warrant  them.  Long  as  history  has  made  mention 
of  negroes,  they  have  never  had  any  art  of  their  own.  Their  features 
are  recorded  by  their  ancient  enemies,  not  by  themselves.  Egyptian 
kings  who,  from  the  earliest  times  of  antiquity,  came  often  into 
collision  with  the  blacks,  had  them  figured  as  defeated  enemies, 
as  prisoners  of  war,  and  as  subject  nations  bringing  tribute.  Their 
grotesque  features,  so  much  differing  from  the  Egyptian  type,  made 
them  a  favorite  subject  for  sculptural  supports  of  thrones,  chairs, 
vases,  &c. ;  or  painted  under  the  soles  of  sandals,  of  which  instances 
abound  in  Museums  as  well  as  in  the  larger  works  on  Egypt. 

To  the  many  examples  of  monumental  negroes  furnished  in 
"Types  of  Mankind,"  we  add  two  that  are  inedited,  due  to  M. 
Prisse  d'Avennes's  friendship  for  his  old  Egyptian  comrade,  Mr. 
Gliddon.     The  first  [fig.  88]  is  accompanied  by  the  following  memo- 

^  Essui  sur  Vlnegalite  des  Races  Hum/lines;  8vo,  vols.  I,  II,  1853;  III,  1854;  IV,  1855. 
Cf.,  on  the  same  subject,  Pott,  Unghichheit  Menschlicher  Eassen  hauptsachlich  vom  sprach- 
wissenschaf [lichen  standpunkle,  1856. 


UNARTISTICAL    RACES.  189 

randum : — "  Tombeau  de  Sehampthe  (Thebes),  — sous  Amounoph  III" 

Fig.  88. 


Asiatic  and  African. 

(Theban  Sculptures  —  XVIIth  dynasty  —  1 6th  century  B.  C.) 

— about  tbe  16th  century  b.  c.     The  Fig.  89. 

second  [fig.  89]  is  the  head  of  one 
of  two  exquisitely-designed  and 
colored  full-length  negroes,  identical 
in  style,  supporting  a  "Vase  peint 
(jaune,  traits  rouges)  sur  les  parois 
du  tombeau  de  A'ichesiou,  pretre 
charge  de  l'autel  et  des  ecritures  du 
grande  temple  de  Thebes,  sous 
Eamses  VII, — XXe  dynastie  (hypo- 
gees  de  Gournah)."  The  first  cor- 
roborates that  which,  since  Morton's 
day,  has  ceased  to  be  disputed,  viz : 
monumental  period  of  Egypt,  of  at  least  three  distinct  types  of  man 
along  the  Nile,  Egyptian,  Shemitic  and  Nigritian ;  the  second  (which 
point,  Mr.  Gliddon's  and  M.  Prisses's  long  familiarity  with  Egypt 
render  them  competent  authorities  to  assert),  is  identical,  after  3000 


o 

Ancient  Negro. 


the  existence. 


during 


all  the 


190 


ON    SOME    OF    THE 


Fig.  90. 


years  of  time,  with  the  ordinary  class  of  black  slaves  still  imported 
from  the  upper  Nile-basin  for  sale  in  the  bazaars  at  Cairo. 

Both  these  monuments  belong  to  the  XVHth  and  XXth  dynasties, 
which  carried  the  arms  of  the  Pharaohs  to  the  upper  Kile  and  to  the 
Euphrates.  The  other  artistical  nations  of  antiquity  knew  little  of 
the  Negro-race.  They  did  not  come  before  Solomon's  epoch  into 
immediate  and  constant  contact  with  it.  "We  see  soon  after,  how- 
ever, a  negro  in  an  Assyrian  battle-scene  of  the  time  of  S argon,  at 
Khorsabad  [90].209    He  might  have  been  exported  from  Memphis  by 

Phoenician  slave-dealers  to  Asia, 
where  he  fell  fighting  for  his 
master  against  the  Assyrians ;  who 
did  not  fail  to  perpetuate  the 
memory  of  such  an  extraordinary 
feature  as  a  black  warrior  must 
have  been  to  them.  On  that  re- 
markable relief  of  the  tomb  of 
Darius  Hystaspes,  at  Persepolis, 
(supra,  p.  ?  fig.  35)  we  have  seen 
the  negro  as  a  representative  of 
Africa.  The  Greeks  seldom  drew 
blacks:  still,  on  beautiful  vases  of 
the  British  Museum  we  meet  with 
the  well-known  negro  features  in  a 
battle-scene.  [See  the  annexed  plate  IX,  fig.  1].  Another  such 
vase,  with  the  representation  of  Hercules  slaying  negroes,  has  been 
published  by  Micali.210  Etruscan  potters,  who,  as  already  remarked, 
liked  to  draw  Oriental  types,  moulded  vases  into  the  shape  of  a  negro 
head,  and  coupled  it  sometimes  with  the  head  of  white  males  or 
females.  The  British  Museum  contains  several  of  these  very  cha- 
racteristic utensils.  [See  Plate  IX,  figs.  2,  3,  4].  These  two  Etru- 
rian vases  are  not  older  than  the  4th  century  b.  c. — probably  between 
200  and  250  b.  c.  The  medal-room  of  the  British  Museum  contains, 
besides,  three  silver  coins  of  Delphi,  age  about  400  b.  c;  having  on 
one  face  the  head  of  a  negro,  with  the  woolly  hair  admirably  indi- 
cated ;  and  on  the  other  a  goat's  head  seen  in  front-view,  between 
two  dolphins,  the  usual  type  of  Delphi.  We  know  likewise  several 
Roman  cameos,  which  represent  negroes  with  all  the  refined  elegance 
of  the  imperial  epoch  [91].  Thus  we  possess  effigies  of  negroes 
drawn  by  six  different  nations  of  antiquity:  Egyptians,  Assyrians, 
Persians,  Greeks,  Etruscans  and  Romans;  from  about  the  18th  cen- 


Khoesabad-Neoro. 


209  Botta,  Monument  de  Ninive,  pi.  88. 


210  Monumenti  Antichi, 


.  ■  '  ■ 


PL  IX. 


. 


Etruscan  Vase . 

3. 


m 


M 


'  *§.?  £ 


Etruscan  drinking -jars. 
(  British  Museum.) 


TJlSrARTISTlCAL    RACES.  191 

tury  b.  c.j  to  the  first  centuries  of  our  era,  which  all  speak  for  the 
unalterable  constancy  of  the  negro  type  such  as  it 
is  in  our  own  days.  We  see  that  it  was  not  only 
the  color,  but  the  peculiar  type  that  struck  the 
ancients ;  and  which  the  Romans,  for  instance, 
knew  quite  as  minutely  as  any  modern  ethnolo- 
gists. Petronius,  who  lived  under  the  emperor 
Nero,  describes,  in  his  Novel,  three  vagabond 
literary  men  who,  having  taken  passage  in  a 
ship  on  the  Mediterranean,  suddenly  discover  that 
it  belongs  to  a  merchant  on  board,  whom  two  of 

,  .  _  Negro  Head. 

them  had  previously  rob  bed.  Dreading  his  revenge,         tpuiSzky  Coll) 
one  of  them  says : 

"Eumolpus,  being  a  scholar,  has  certainly  ink  with  him:  let  us  therefore  dye  ourselves 
from  top  to  toe,  and  as  Ethiopian  slaves  we  shall  be  at  his  command  without  fear  of  torture; 
for  by  the  change  of  color  we  shall  deceive  our  enemies."  But  Geiton  exclaims  in  reply: 
"as if  color  atone  could  transform  our  shape  !  for  many  things  have  to  conspire  that  the  lie 
might  be  maintained  under  any  circumstances.  Or  can  we  fill  our  lips  with  an  ugly  swell- 
ing ?  can  we  crisp  our  hair  with  an  iron  ?  and  mark  our  forehead  with  scars  ?  and  distend 
our  shanks  into  a  curve  ?  and  draw  our  heels  down  to  the  earth  ?  and  change  our  beard  into 
a  foreign  fashion?  —  artificial  color  besmears  the  body,  but  does  not  change  it."211 

Voltaire  has  somewhere  wittily  remarked,  "the  first  white  man 
who  beheld  a  negro  must  have  been  greatly  astonished ;  but  the 
reasoner  who  claims  that  the  negro  comes  from  the  white  man 
astonishes  me  a  great  deal  more." 

Negroes,  however,  are  not  the  only  unartistical  race.  "We  have 
already  spoken  of  the  Shemites  among  the  whites,  and  we  must  add 
to  them  the  Turanian  or  Turk-Tartar  family  of  nations ;  that  is  to  say, 
the  Hungarians  proper,  the  Turks  and  Turkomans,  the  Finns,  and 
some  migratory  tribes  of  southern  Siberia ;  none  of  them  ever  having 
produced  any  painter  or  sculptor.  But  not  even  all  the  Japetides  are 
endowed  with  artistical  tendencies.  The  Celts  and  Slavonians,  and 
among  the  Teutonic  races,  the  Scandinavians,  had  no  national  art. 
The  imagery  of  their  epics  and  lyrics  is  neither  picturesque  nor 
sculptural ;  their  buildings,  pictures  and  statues,  are  characterized  by 
no  peculiar  type,  and  are  either  the  works  of  foreigners,  or  servile 
imitations  of  imported  models.  The  Turks  and  Celts  have,  at  least, 
a  peculiar  feeling  for  ornament,  for  decorative  art  and  harmony  of 
colors ;  but  all  the  other  nations  mentioned  above  have  never  felt 
that  inward  impulse  which  prompted  even  the  semi-civilized  Toltecan 

211  T.  Petronii  Arbitri,  Satiricon,  cap.  CII:  — compare  the  extract  from  Virgil  in  Types 
of  Mankind  (p.  255) ;  and  the  quotation  from  Locman's  Fables:  (p.  246)  which  is  but  the 
Arabian  or  Persian  dress  of  the  same  idea  in  iEsop's. 


192  SOME    OF    THE    TJNARTISTICAL    RACES. 

nations  of  America  to  build  gigantic  structures  and  to  adom  them 
with  sculptures  and  paintings:212  the  genius  of  art  has  never  smiled 
upon  them.  But,  such  being  the  indubitable  facts  of  history,  have 
we  therefore  to  consider  Hungarians,  Celts,  Shemites  and  Scandina- 
vians, as  lower  races  than  the  ante-Columbian  Aztecs  of  Mexico,  and 
the  Aymaras  and  Quichoas  of  Peru  ?  Are  we,  because  some  nations 
got  peculiar  endowments  not  shared  by  other  races,  to  transfer  these 
facts  into  the  moral,  social,  and  political  sphere  ?  Are  the  scientific 
facts  about  the  original  "unity"  or  "diversity"  of  human  races,  and 
their  equal  or  unequal  mental  and  artistic  endowments,  to  bear 
upon  their  political,  social,  and  legal  treatment  ?  Are  the  Shemites 
to  be  despised  because  they  cannot  understand  epics  and  theogonies? 
and  the  Celts  oppressed  because  their  imagination  predominates 
over  their  reasoning  faculties  ?  and  the  Negroes  enslaved  because 
they  never  arrive  at  orthography  or  grammatical  correctness  ?  "Will 
the  Hungarians,  if  they  could  be  forced  to  forget  their  language  and 
to  speak  German;  and  the  Poles,  if  they  merge  into  the  Russian 
family,  become  more  useful  to  mankind  than  in  their  own  languages  ? 
"Will  they,  by  changing  their  idiom,  change  their  national  peculiari- 
ties? Can  they  develope  themselves  under  oppression  and  on  a 
foreign  basis,  better  than  in  freedom  and  in  their  national  individu- 
ality ?  To  all  these  questions  there  is  but  one  reply :  whatever  be 
their  origin  and  endowments.  They  are  all  men;  that  is  to  say, 
beings  possessing  reason  and  conscience,  responsible  for  their  actions 
to  their  Creator,  to  mankind  and  to  themselves,  able  to  recognise 
truth,  and  to  discern  between  right  and  wrong,  and  therefore  they 
are  equally  entitled  to  "life,  liberty  and  pursuit  of  happiness." 

212[So  true  is  this  remark,  that  Waltjeck  ( Yucatan,  p.  34)  relates  how  the  Meridanos  are 
excellent  imitators  and  clever  workmen  to  this  day;  possessing,  like  their  ancestors,  an  innate 
power  for  sculpture  and  drawing.  Again,  in  a  more  austral  and  less  artistic  part  of  America, 
the  mulatto-breeds  between  Indians,  negroes  and  Portuguese,  have  much  talent  for  art 
(Debret,  Voyage  pitloresque  au  Bresil,  III,  p.  84).  In  spite  even  of  Islamism,  this  perdu- 
rable race-instinct  breaks  forth  in  Egypt  among  the  Theban  fellahs;  whose  Benvenuto 
Cellinis,  with  the  humblest  instruments,  manufacture  "modern  antiques "  with  sufficient 
skill  to  gratify  that  "love  for  Egyptian  art"  professed  by  the  most  fastidious  Anglo-Saxon 
toiirist.  An  Cammoonee  was,  during  my  time  at  Thebes,  the  Sheykh  of  native  artists  in 
that  line.  My  friend  Mr.  A.  C.  Harris,  and  myself,  supplied  him  with  all  the  small  tools  we 
could  spare  (bits  of  tin  and  glass,  broken  penknives,  nails,  old  toothbrushes,  &c),  in  hopes 
through  such  means,  under  Providence,  to  flood  the  market  with  antiquarian  curiosities 
satisfactory  to  "les  badauds;"  and  thus  obviate  the  necessity  for  their  chipping  the  monu- 
ments.    (See  my  Appeal  to  the  Antiquaries,  London,  Madden,  1841,  pp.  139-45). — G.  R.  Or.] 


HINDOO    AND    CHINESE    CIVILIZATIONS     AND    ART.      193 


X. — HINDOO    AND    CHINESE    CIVILIZATIONS    AND    ART. 

The  peninsula  of  the  Indus  and  Ganges  is  separated  from  the 
mainland  of  Asia,  by  sand-deserts  and  ranges  of  inaccessible  moun- 
tains. The  few  long  and  narrow  passes  which  lead  through  these 
mountains,  were  rarely  used  as  means  of  communication  with  the 
"West  and  North,  for  they  are  the  home  of  warlike,  robber-tribes,  ac- 
customed to  levy  black-mail  on  the  surrounding  populations.  The 
currents  of  the  sea,  and  the  directions  of  the  winds,  led  the  enter- 
prise of  the  Hindoos  to  the  South-East,  to  the  Malay  peninsula  and 
its  island-world.  It  was  thither  that  India  sent  her  culture  and  re- 
ligion :  untouched  by  the  lively  development  of  the  classical  western 
world,  she  remained  unconnected  with  the  current  of  our  history. 

Scarce  and  faint  were  the  legends  about  that  great  country  of  the 
East,  which,  in  times  of  classical  antiquity,  reached  the  West  by  the 
way  of  Persia  and  Arabia.  The  mythical  tradition  of  the  triumphs 
of  Bacchus,  and  Hercules,  was  all  that  reminded  republican  Greece 
of  the  home  of  spices  and  gems.  Guided  by  this  tradition,  Alex- 
ander the  Macedonian  reached  the  frontiers  of  the  fable-land;  but 
even  his  adventurous  spirit  had  to  give  up  progress  into  the  interior. 
The  elephants,  which  he  brought  from  the  upper  Penjaub,  decided 
the  battles  of  his  successors  for  more  than  half  a  century  after  his 
death ;  down  to  the  time  when  the  last  of  them  went  up  the  Capito- 
line  hill,  in  the  triumph  of  Curius  Dentatus.  This  animal  must  have 
lived  full  fifty  years  in  Macedonian  harness  after  the  war  with 
Pyrrhus,  being  the  last  evidence  of  the  unrivalled  eastern  conquests 
of  the  great  Macedonian.  The  Roman  Legions  were  never  able  to 
surmount  the  difficulties  which  barred  access  to  Hindostan  ;  and  a 
few  merchants  and  ambassadors  were  the  only  western  people,  who, 
during  the  times  of  classical  antiquity,  had  seen  the  sacred  rivers  of 
the  peninsula.213  The  development  of  society,  religion,  government, 
and  art,  with  the  Hindoos,  their  institution  of  castes,  their  single  and 
efficient  system  of  self-government,  their  elaborate  eode  of  law,  their 
epic  and  dramatic  poetry,  and  their  stupendous  works  of  architec- 
ture and  sculpture,  are,  therefore,  all  of  indigenous  growth.  They 
are  certainly  not  derived  from,  and  many  of  them  are  probably 
much  anterior  to,  the  Macedonian  invasion  ;  which  could  not  have 
left  any  lasting  trace ;  both  from  its  short  duration,  and  from  the 

213  One  of  these  successful  travellers,  Babdesanes,  gives  us  the  first  description  of  a 
Hindoo  rock-temple  adorned  with  the  sculptures  of  an  androgynous  God.  See  Pokphteius 
apud  Stob^eum,  Edog.  Phys.  i.  p.  144. 

13 


194  HINDOO    AND    CHINESE 

comparatively  small  extent  of  the  territory  overrun  by  the  forces  of 
Alexander,  and  even  of  Seleucus  and  Demetrius,  his  Syrian  and 
Bactrian  successors. 

[The  Punjab  remained  under  the  nominal  sway  of  the  Macedonians  for  about  ten  years, 
when  this  supremacy  was  thrown  off  by  Sandracottus  (Chandragupta),  about  317  B.  c.  ; 
when  Seleucus  of  Syria  found  it  wiser  to  make  peace  with  the  rebel  Hindoo  raja,  and  to 
give  him  his  daughter  in  marriage.  The  Greek  kings  of  Bactria,  from  Demetrius  to 
Menander  and  Apollodorus,—  that  is  to  say,  for  about  one  century — were  likewise  suzerains 
of  the  country  on  the  Indus  until  120  E.  c.  Still,  they  resided  in  Bactria ;  and  there  is  no 
trace  of  Greek  mythology,  and  consequently  of  Greek  art  intimately  connected  with  it, 
anywhere  in  the  Punjab :  on  the  contrary,  the  Bactrian  kings  put  the  representation  of 
the  Hindoo  Shiva  and  of  his  bull  Nandi  on  their  coins  struck  for  the  Indian  dominions. 
Hellenism,  therefore,  did  not  spread  along  the  Indus,  but  it  had  to  yield  to  Hindooism. 

After  the  Macedonian  visit,  Hindostan  remained  for  more  than  a  thousand  years  undis- 
turbed by  foreigners;  outliving  the  fierce  contest  between  Buddhism  and  Brahmanism; 
civilizing  by  the  former  the  Malay  peninsula,  and  extending  its  moral  influence  to  Thibet 
and  China,  whilst  the  latter  converted  Java  about  a.  d.  800.  Two  centuries  after  that 
event,  Shah  Mahmoud,  of  Ghuzni,  the  monotheistic  fanatic,  called  "the  destroyer  of 
idols,"  overran  the  north  of  Hindostan,  burning  the  towns,  sacking  the  temples,  and 
breaking  the  images ;  and  settled  his  Pattan  and  Affghan  followers  in  this  fertile  country. 
Ever  since  his  time,  northern  Turanian  conquerors  found  no  difficulty  to  invade  India, 
either  for  pillage  or  for  conquest.  Timur,  Baber,  and  Nadir  Shah,  flooded  the  country  with 
their  followers,  in  succession ;  and  planted  a  numerous  Mohammedan  population,  and 
Islamite  dynasties,  among  the  effeminate  Hindoos.  Arab  merchants  spread,  at  the  same 
time,  over  all  the  coasts  and  islands,  and  converted  Malay-Java  (which  had  previously 
accepted  the  civilization  and  religion  of  the  Vedas)  to  Islam ;  about  A.  v.  1400.  Still,  the 
bulk  of  the  population  of  the  peninsula  remained  unshaken  by  the  purer  religion  and 
social  institutions  of  the  Mohammedan  conquerors.  European  invaders  came  next.  More 
systemically  than  their  Mussulman  predecessors,  they  broke  up  the  legal  institutions  and 
the  traditions  of  indigenous  administration.  They  swept  away  the  old  aristocracy  and 
gentry  of  the  country ;  but  the  character  of  the  Hindoo,  and  his  views  of  God  and  nature, 
of  law  and  society,  remain  unchanged.  The  population  lives  among,  but  does  not  intermix 
with,  their  former  rulers,  the  Mussulmans ;  nor  with  their  present  European  lords — who 
(to  use  a  geological  simile)  are  in  India  the  two  newest  strata  of  recent  date ;  covering  the 
primary  formations  mechanically,  but  failing  to  transform  chemically  the  old  plutonio 
rocks  of  Buddhism  and  Brahmanism.] 

"With  the  Hindoos,  religion,  institutions,  and  art,  are  (as  every- 
where amid  aboriginal  races)  in  the  most  intimate  connection  with 
the  physical  features  of  the  country.  Here  the  exuberant  power  of 
tropical  vegetation,  equally  gigantic  in  creation  and  in  destruction, 
subdue  the  energies  of  man.  The  sudden  changes  of  temperature, — 
the  tropical  rains  which,  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours,  swell  the  rivulet 
into  a  great  stream, — the  snowy  mountain-peaks  and  mighty  rivers, 
— the  jungles  that,  with  their  lofty  bamboo,  encroach  upon  every 
inch  of  ground  left  uncultivated, — the  strange  trees,  of  which  every 
branch  becomes  a  new  stem, — the  powerful  animals,  from  the  ele- 
phant, and  tiger,  down  to  the  white  ant  dangerous  to  the  works  of 


CIVILIZATIONS    AND    ART.  195 

human  industry  by  its  enormous  numbers,  —  in  short,  all  nature 
appears  in  such  overwhelming  features,  that  the  Hindoo  gives  up 
the  continuous  struggle  with  it,  and  finds  his  reward  not  in  activity 
but  in  passive  contemplation.  His  imagination  soon  gets  the  upper 
hand  of  his  understanding;  and  in  mythology,  art,  and  science,  takes 
an  unrestrained  flight  into  the  transcendental,  the  monstrous  and 
shapeless. 

The  Hindoo  adores  "  nature,"  as  well  its  destructive  as  its  creative 
power ;  he  recognises  a  soul  in  every  living  creature ;  he  believes  in 
the  transmigration  of  the  soul ;  and  therefore  throws  the  corpse  of 
his  beloved  into  the  Ganges  or  into  the  fire,  the  sooner  to  be  dissolved 
into  its  original  atoms  by  the  pure  elements.  The  "Nirvana,"  with 
the  ancient  Buddhists,  and  the  "Yogha"  with  the  Brahmans,  that 
is  to  say,  the  losing  of  the  individuality  in  contemplation  —  a  death- 
like state — being  with  him  the  noblest  aim  of  life  and  the  highest 
degree  of  sanctity,  death  has  no  terrors  for  him : — he  flings  himself 
under  the  wheels  of  the  triumphal  car  of  Shiva  at  Jaggernaut,  and 
the  widow  willingly  ascends  the  pile  with  the  corpse  of  her  husband. 
In  the  nature  around  him,  destruction  being  always  followed  by 
immediate  regeneration,  he  believes  creation  to  be  an  uninterrupted 
cycle  of  one  and  the  same  life,  only  changing  its  form;  and  his  poets 
sing,  that 

"  Like  as  men  throw  away  old  garments,  and  clothe  themselves  in  new  attire, 
Thus  the  soul  leaves  the  body  and  migrates  into  another." 

Nature  being  to  the  Hindoo  the  incarnation  of  Godhead,  he  has 
a  deeply  reverential  feeling  for  it ;  and  adorns  his  works  of  art  with 
flowers  in  such  a  profusion,  that  man  and  his  actions  become  often 
only  accessories  of  this  adornment.  Still,  it  is  not  in  an  arbitrary 
way  that  he  sheds  his  flowers  on  poetry  and  sculpture ;  they  always 
have  a  deeper,  symbolical  meaning. 

During  the  inundations,  when  the  valley  of  Bengal  is  nearly  lost 
under  the  waters,  the  petals  of  the  Lotus  flower  alone  swimming  on 
the  waves,  bear  evidence  that  the  vital  powers  of  nature  have  not 
been  destroyed  by  the  floods.  This  flower  became,  therefore,  the 
symbol  of  life  and  of  creation :  it  is  the  throne  of  all  the  Gods,  and 
especially  of  Brahma  the  creator. 

The  representation  of  Kama,  the  God  of  Love,  is  one  of  the  most 
gracefully  symbolical  —  though  entirely  unplastic,  specimens  of 
Hindoo  imagination.  It  is  a  smiling  child  with  bow  and  arrows, 
riding  on  a  parrot.  The  bow  is  a  bent  sugar-cane  adorned  with 
flowers,  the  string  is  formed  by  a  row  of  flying  bees,  and  the  arrow 
is  a  lily.  Thus  the  Hindoo  tries  to  represent  the  gentleness  and  in- 
constancy, the  impudence  and  the  innocence,  the  sweetness  and  the 
stings,  of  love,  in  one  and  the  same  image. 


196  HINDOO    AND    CHINESE 

Iii  the  same  symbolical  way,  the  Goddess  of  Beauty  and  Pleasure 
is  the  Goddess  of  Nature ;  for,  Nature  is  always  beautiful,  and  the 
beautiful  always  natural.  She  is  the  wife  of  Shiva  —  the  God  of 
Destruction,  and  holds  a  flower  in  one  hand,  with  a  snake  coiled 
around  it :  since  pleasure  is  blended  with  danger,  as  life  and  beauty 
with  death. 

I  cannot  enter  here  upon  Hindoo  Architecture,  nor  give  any 
details  of  the  wonders  of  the  cave-temples,  some  of  them  resembling 
our  churches  by  their  nave  and  aisles.  Space  forbids  me  to  speak  of 
the  colossal  tanks  in  the  south  surrounded  by  huge  buildings,  and 
adorned  by  grand  flights  of  steps ;  or  of  the  deep  wells  in  the  west, 
cut  into  the  rock  and  surmounted  by  a  series  of  galleries,  to  afford 
cool  shade  in  that  hot  climate.  I  must  not  here  enumerate  their 
triumphal  monuments,  their  columns  decorated  with  reliefs,  their 
grand  arches  surmounted  by  statues.  Suffice  it  to  mention  the  fact, 
that  Hindoo  art,  through  all  the  epochs  of  its  history,  was  entirely 
indigenous  and  peculiar  to  the  peninsula.  The  great  palaces, 
temples,  and  tombs  of  the  Mohammedan  princes  bear  not  the 
slightest  resemblance  to  the  native  architecture,  being  themselves 
analogous  to  the  mosques  of  Cairo,  and  the  seraglios  of  Constantinople 
or  of  Moorish  Spain. 

The  character  of  Hindoo  sculpture  is  similar  to  Hindoo  poetry : 
it  is  eminently  feminine.  We  find  with  their  artists  always  a  deli- 
cate feeling  for  the  pleasant  and  graceful,  as  well  as  for  the  pompous 
and  adorned,  whilst  they  fail  in  their  attempts  at  grandeur,  —  being 
either  crushed  by  the  exuberance  of  the  decorative  element,  or  losing 
themselves  in  tasteless  and  adventurous  exaggeration.  In  general, 
their  statues  and  reliefs  are  true  in  the  principal  forms,  and  soft  and 
elaborate  in  execution. 

The  sculptors  are  peculiarly  successful  in  rendering  the  expression 
of  deep  contemplation,  or  of  religious  devotion.  The  representa- 
tions of  domestic  life  are  of  the  greatest  sweetness ;  the  feminine 
passive  character  of  the  Hindoos  being  admirably  portrayed  in  their 
pleasant  simplicity.  But  when  a  God  is  to  be  drawn  in  action,  and 
his  power  to  be  symbolized,  the  artist  failed  in  his  task :  unable  to 
reproduce  superhuman  power  by  idealizing  the  human  form,  he 
betook  himself  to  unartistic  and  symbolical  methods,  as  by  multi- 
plying head  and  hands.  Such  symbolical  personifications  of  Godhead 
are  not  at  all  exclusively  Hindoo ;  they  were  not  unknown  to  the 
mythology,  and  earlier  poets  of  Greece.  The  Giants,  with  their 
hundred  arms ;  Geryon,  with  three  bodies ;  and  Polyphemus,  with  his 
eye  on  the  forehead ;  are  subjects  of  art  as  unplastic  as  any  creatures 
of  Hindoo  imagination.   But  the  Greek  sculptors  avoided  to  represent 


CIVILIZATIONS    AND     ART.  197 

such  myths,  whereas  the  Indian  artists  had  often  to  deal  with  them ; 
and  we  must  confess,  that  sometimes  they  succeeded  in  conciliating 
them  with  good  taste,  by  giving  prominence  to  the  principal  pure 
forms,  and  treating  the  monstrous  appendages  as  decorative  accesso- 
ries. Monstrosity  is,  on  the  whole,  not  the  principal  character  of 
Hindoo  art;  hut  monstrous  idols  excite  the  curiosity  of  the  European 
visitor  of  India  more  than  artistically-carved  statues ;  he  buys  them 
and  carries  them  to  the  "West,  on  account  of  their  very  oddity. 
Hence,  our  public  collections  and  curiosity-shops  are  swamped  with 
four-handed  and  three-headed  monsters,  which  ought  not  to  be  taken 
for  fair  specimens  of  Hindoo  art,  though  they  have  given  rise  to 
the  general  belief  that  Hindostan  has  no  art  worthy  to  be  noticed. 
We  can  scarcely  wonder  that  such  is  the  case,  since  the  public  at 
large  —  let  us  boldly  avow  it,  —  cares  little  for  art:  how  then  should 
it  take  an  interest  in  an  art  founded  on  myths,  institutions,  and  a 
culture  which  has  scarcely  any  affinity  with  our  own  civilization  ? 
The  few  scholars,  on  the  other  hand,  who  devote  their  time  to  the 
literature  of  Hindostan,  are  but  too  often  philologists,  without  any 
artistic  education.  "We  have,  therefore,  no  publications  on  Hindoo 
art,  such  as  those  of  Champollion,  Rosellini,  and  Lepsius,  on  Egypt, 
or  of  Texier,  Flandin,  Botta,  and  Layard,  on  Persia  and  Assyria. 
The  most  important  sculptures  of  India  have  not  yet  been  copied; 
and  the  collections  brought  to  the  West  have  not  been  made  with 
the  view  of  giving  a  correct  idea  of  the  peculiar  style  of  Hindoo  art 
in  its  different  schools  and  epochs.  The  confusion  becomes  still 
greater,  by  the  fact  that  the  old  mythology  of  Brahmanism  has,  with 
a  few  slight  alterations,  remained  the  religion  of  the  population  down 
to  our  days.  Idols  are  cast  and  carved  continually,  and  their  barba- 
rous style  throws  discredit  on  the  better  specimens  of  former  ages. 
Our  knowledge  of  Indian  art  is  only  fragmentary,  and  scarcely  autho- 
rizes us  to  assign  its  proper  position  to  every  monument,  either 
artistically  or  chronologically.  Still,  a  few  facts  are  sufficiently  ascer- 
tained, to  serve  as  a  clue  in  the  labyrinth  of  Hindoo  art. 

The  rock-caves,  with  their  fantastic,  exuberant,  and  somewhat 
exaggerated  reliefs,  are  all  of  Buddhist  origin.  They  are  more  chaste 
in  style  than  the  idols  of  the  present  worshippers  of  Shiva;  and 
belong  to  a  period  of  Indian  history,  classical  for  art  and  poetry, 
from  500  b.  c,  to  about  300  a.  d.  By  a  strange  coincidence,  it  is  the 
same  period  in  which  Phidias  and  Praxiteles  and  Lysippus,  and  the 
Roman  artists  of  Augustus  and  Trajan,  flourished  in  Europe. 

Still  more  graceful,  and  more  serene,  are  the  Hindoo  sculptures  of 
the  isle  of  Java,  which  we  meet  in  the  ruins  of  the  temples  of  Boro- 
Bodo  and  Barandanum.  The  great  Sir  Stamford  Raffles,  and  the 
Bombay  Asiatic  Society,  have  published  a  few  specimens  of  those 


198 


HINDOO    AND    CHINESE 


Fig.  91. 


Buddha. 


Fig.  92. 


excellent  reliefs ;  which  may  be  placed  among  the  best  productions  of 

art.  The  following  drawing  of  a  colossal 
head  of  Buddha  [91] 2U  in  a  volcanic  stone, 
now  in  the  Glyptothec  of  Munich,  may 
give  an  idea  of  the  elegance  and  feminine 
character  of  those  sculptures. 

The  great  bulk  of  the  idols,  in  the  col- 
lection  of  the   British  Museum,  of  the 
East  India  House,  and  of  king  Louis  at 
Munich,  belong  to  another  style,  which 
we  call  the  florid  style,  characterized  in 
its  best  specimens  by  an  elaborate  ele- 
gance, and  often  by  affectation  of  sweet- 
ness, with  a  profusion  of  ornaments  which 
encumbers  the  figures.     Fig.  92,  from  a 
bronze  of  the  British  Museum,  representing  Lakshmi,  the  Goddess 
of  Beauty,  or  Hindoo  Venus,  is  a  fair  specimen 
of  this  style ;  which  belongs  to  the  XV th  and 
XVIth  century  of  our  era,  and  is  still  imitated  by 
the  modern  artists  of  India.  There  are  some  rude 
figures,  of  an  entirely  different  style,  in  some 
of  the  Museums  of  Europe ;  and  again  others 
evidently  archaic  in  their  type :  still,  all  of  them 
are  characterized  by  the  same  long  pointed  nose, 
the  same  mild  eye,  and  the  same  sweetness  of 
expression  in  the  oval  face,- — which  form  still  the 
distinctive  marks  of  the  high   castes   of  Hin- 
dostim. 

It  is  peculiarly  interesting  to  see  a  school  of 
art,  so  eminently  feminine,  apply  itself  to  the  ser- 
vice of  a  more  martial  race ;  trying  to  represent 
the  features  and  the  court-life  of  the  Turanian  Dynasties,  established 
in  the  XVH — XVHIth  century  all  over  the  peninsula.  The  minia- 
ture-paintings of  the  time  of  Shah  Jehan,  Jehangir,  Akbar,  and  Au- 
rengzeb,  are  really  admirable.  Whether  they  represent  the  splendor 
of  a  gorgeous  court,  or  portray  scenes  of  domestic  life,  there  is  such  a 
gentle  delicacy  of  feeling  displayed  in  them,  such  a  modest  grace  in 
the  attitudes,  and  such  a  charm,  especially  in  the  female  forms,  that 
they  are  as  pleasing,  even  to  European  taste,  as  the  tales  of  the  Ara- 
bian Mghts.  And  yet  there  is  no  perspective  to  be  met  with  in  those 
paintings ;  the  manner  of  shading  the  figures  is  unnatural ;  the  cos- 
tume is  strange,  and  the  grouping  somewhat  awkward.     All  this  is 


Lakshmi. 


211  Othmar  Frank,  Ind.  Mythologies  and  Sir  Stamford  Raffles,  Java. 


CIVILIZATIONS     AND     ART. 


199 


Fig.  92. 


Indian  Pkince,  (Pulszky  Coll.) 


Fig.  93. 


eminently  Hindoo ;  but  the  features  of  the  persons  represented  mark 
their  foreign  origin.  The  likeness  of  a  prince 
of  the  house  of  Timur  [92],  probably  Darab 
the  brother  of  Aurengzeb,  on  a  sardonyx- 
cameo  of  my  collection,  shows  a  Turanian 
cast  of  features. 

Four  portraits  of  Mohammedan  princes  and 
statesmen  in  India,  of  the  time  of  Aureng- 
zeb (1658-1707), — selected  from  a  large  col- 
lection of  likenesses  painted  by  contempo- 
rary Hindoo  artists  and  now  adorning  my 
Indian  Museum — are  most  remarkable  for 
their  excellent  characterization  of  the  differ- 
ent races  of  the  Muslim  aristocracy  in  India, 
during  the  XVHth  century.  Shah  Jehan 
[93],  the  Grand  Mogul  of  Delhi,  from  1628 
to  1658,  is  the  grandson  of  Akbar  the  Great,  who  was  grandson  to 
Babur,  —  founder  of  the  dynasty  of  the  Mo- 
guls, which  gave  an  uninterrupted  succession 
of  six  great  rulers  to  India,  froin  1494  to 
1707.  Babur,  a  Turkoman  from  Ferghana, 
was  the  fourth  in  descent  from  Timur-leng ; 
and,  though  promiscuous  polygamy  is  apt  to 
destroy  the  national  type  of  any  race,  we  still 
behold,  in  this  portrait  of  Shah  Jehan,  the 
old  Turanian  character,  resembling  the  por- 
traits of  the  Parthian  kings. 

KhanKhanna,  the  General-in-Chief  of  the 
Sultan  of  Beejapoore  in  the  Dekhan,  is  a  Ta- 
mul  convert  to  Islam.  [See  his  portrait,  slightly  enlarged,  tinted  to 
give  the  color  of  his  skin,  in  Gliddon's  "  Ethnographic  Tableau"  (No. 
46,  Hindoo,)  at  the  end  of  this  volume.]  He  represents  the  aboriginal 
negroid  (Dravidian)  race  of  the  southern  table-lands  of  Hindostan ;  not 
to  be  confounded  with  the  Brahman  race  of  the  Gangetic  valley — 
which  is  not  aboriginal,  but  a  conquering  race  coming  originally  from 
beyond  the  Hindoo  Kush,  and  closely  allied  to  the  Arians  of  Persia. 

Khan  Khanna's  Chief,  Mahmood  Adil  Shah  [94],  of  Beejapoore, 
claimed  descent  from  the  present  Osmanlees.  His  ancestor,  Yussuf 
Khan  (1501),  foiinder  of  the  empire  of  Beejapoore,  having  been 
the  son  of  Sultan  Amurath  II.,  of  Anatolia,  his  round  Turanian  skull 
is  still  more  characteristic  than  that  of  Shah  Jehan. 
-  Shah  Mirza  [as  such  he  stands  in  the  "Ethnographic  Tableau," 
(No.  23,  Uzbek  Tatar)],  the  Chancellor  of  the  kingdom  of  Golconda, 
is  an  Uzbek  Tartar:  and  Mollah  Rukha  [95],  his  chief  clerk,  cannot 


Shah  Jehan. 


200 


HINDOO    AND    CHINESE 


Fig.  94. 


Fig.  95. 


MoLLAH    RtjKHA. 


Mahm6od  Adil  Shah. 


Fig.  96. 


MtisA  Khan. 


disown  his  Arab  descent ;  the  cunning  She- 
mitic  features  are  unniistakeable.  MtJsa 
Khan,  [96]  the  Affghan  General-in-Chief  of 
Golconda,  is  stamped  with  the  peculiar  cha- 
racter of  his  race.  We  see  in  this  remark- 
able assemblage  of  the  statesmen  of  Gol- 
conda, under  the  reign  of  Sultan  Abd-Al- 
lahKobeha,  (aboutthe  middle  of  the  XVTIth 
century,)  all  the  elements  of  Mohammedan 
conquest  in  Hiudostan.  Whoever  has  lived 
for  a  while  in  India  will  recognise  in  them 
the  most  characteristic  types  of  Islamite 
aristocracy  in  the  Dekhan,  as  it  is  still  seen 
at  the  Court  of  the  Nizam. 

The  European  conquest  of  India  has  not  improved  art  among  the 
natives.  Trying  to  imitate  their  European  lords,  and  struck  with  the 
peculiar  effect  of  light  in  our  drawings  and  paintings,  the  Hindoo 
painters  have  lost  the  traditions  of  their  own  art,  and  are  lapsing 
into  barbarism,  wherever  the  contact  with  Europeans  is  great — for 
instance,  in  Bengal:  whilst  the  painters  of  the  Dekhan  are  somewhat 
better,  though  not  equal  to  the  masters  who  produced  those  miniature- 
likenesses,  &c,  of  the  greater  time  of  the  Grand  Moguls. 

The  preliminary  remark,  that  we  do  not  know  sufficiently  the  monu- 
ments of  Hindostan  to  characterize  the  different  schools  and  epochs 
of  ai't,  applies  with  still  stronger  force  to  the  peninsula  east  of  the 
Ganges.  •  We  know,  however,  the  monotonous  statues  of  Buddha, 
carved  and  east  by  the  artists  of  Birma,  well  enough  to  see  that  Bir- 
mese  art  is  clumsier  than  Indian ;  whilst  the  features  of  the  statues 
are  altogether  different  from  the  Hindoo  cast.  As  to  Siam  and 
Cochin-China,  concerning  their  art,  we  were  unable  to  get  any  facts 
whatever.  These  countries  are  visited  only  by  a  few  merchants  and 
missionaries,  who  ignore  art;     China  is  by  far  better  known,  in  this 


CIVILIZATIONS    AND    ART.  201 

respect,  than  the  Malay  peninsula  and  its  adjacent  countries ;  and 
deserves  the  attention  of  the  ethnologist  and  philosopher,  since  it  is 
the  country  where  the  Yellow-race  has  developed  itself  on  founda- 
tions entirely  peculiar  and  entirely  indigenous".   In  China  all  the  citi- 
zens are  politically  equal :  legally  there  are  neither  patricians,  nor 
slaves,  nor  serfs ;  neither  privileged  nor  unprotected  classes  in  the 
country.     The  priests  form  no  hierarchy,  the  officials  are  not  chosen 
from  among  an  aristocracy  of  birth.     The  Yellow-race  has  not  been 
trained  by  theocracy,  nor  ennobled  by  chivalry.      From  the  very 
earliest  times,  we  find  with  the  Chinese  a  thorough  centralization;  a 
well-organized  bureaucracy,  open  to  competition  ;  a  paternal  despot- 
ism, carefully  superintending,  regulating,  repressing  and  suppressing 
the  moral  exertions  of  the  people,  and  providing  that  nobody  shoidd 
aspire  to  a  position  to  which  he  has  not  become  entitled  by  his  train- 
ing, and  his  degrees  taken  at  the  regular  examination.     The  emperor 
sits  on  the  throne  as  the  incarnation  of  sober  common  sense ;  the  priest 
is  the  servant  of  the  state  ;  the  church  and  school  are  police-establish- 
ments, by  which  the  Chinese  is  taught  blindly  to  respect  authority, 
officials,  "law  and  order,"  and  to  which  every  child  is  sent  to  learn 
practical  sciences.     In  fact,  it  is  the  system  of  patriarchal,  enlight- 
ened, absolutism, — so  much  praised  by  the  statesmen  of  continental 
Europe,  and  many  self-called  "radicals  "  of  England;  the  system  of 
a  nobility  of  merit  and  office ;  of  centralized  functionarism ;  of  select 
committees  and  boards  of  inquiry ;  of  orders  in  council,  and  volumi- 
nous instructions  for  the  people  how  to  behave  so  as  to  become  happy ; 
of  checks  and  counter-checks ;  of  spies  and  denunciations ;  of  police 
regulations  and  vexations.     In  short,  China  is  the  country  of  enlight- 
enment, of  equality,  and  of  the  bamboo, — paternally  applied  to  every- 
body, from  the  prime  minister  to  the  humblest  tiller  of  the  ground. 
These  institutions  show  clearly  that  the  Chinese  is  endowed  with 
a  sober  and  dry  imagination,  that  cold  reason  predominates,  and  that 
the  creative  power  is  scarcely  developed  in  him.     Accordingly,  we 
find  that  reverie,  depth  of  feeling,  and  philosophical  research,  are 
unknown  to  his  literature.     His  artists  never  attempted  to  create  an 
ideal:   they  are  materialists   and   flat  imitators  of  nature,  struck 
rather  by  the  difference  than  the  affinity  of  forms ;  their  aim  is  there- 
fore always  the  characteristical,  not  the  beautiful.     This  tendency 
leads  them  to  exaggeration  and  caricature.     Imitating  nature  in  a 
servile  manner,  the  picturesque  is  much  more  in  their  way  than  the 
sculptural ;  the  naked  form  remained  altogether  misunderstood  by 
them.     They  do  not  see  and  copy  the  principal  outlines,  but  the 
accidental  details :   the  wrinkles,  the  hair,  or  the   swelling  of  the 
muscles.     As  to  drapery,  they  imitate  principally  its  folds,  and  seem 
to  forget  that  they  cover  a  body. 


1/ 


202       HINDOO    AND    CHINESE    CIVILIZATIONS,    ETC. 


In  regard  to  the  materials  employed  by  the  Chinese  artist,  we 
find  that  he  excels  in  casting  of  metals,  and  that  no  stone  is  so  hard 
as  to  deter  him  by  technical  difficulties  from  employing  it.  He 
carves  in  wood  and  ivory,  he  chisels  the  marble,  he  cuts  the  gem,  he 
moulds  the  clay,  he  makes  the  best  pottery.  "Wood-cutting  and  litho- 
graphy were  indigenous  in  China,  long  before  Europe  knew  them. 

"We  may  say  without  exaggeration,  that  all  the  materials,  and  the 
most  important  of  the  workmanship  of  the  "West,  are  known  among 
the  Yellow-race;  and  tbat  in  skill  and  industry  the  son  of  the  Celes- 
tial empire  surpasses  the  Japetide.  But  how  to  deal  artistically  with 
a  materia],  how  to  combine  it  with,  and  make  it  subservient  to, 
the  idea  of  the  work  of  art,  this  remained  an  unsolved  problem  to 
the  Chinaman.  Seduced  by  his  mechanical  skill,  he  seeks  the 
highest  aim  of  art  in  overcoming  practical  difficulties :  accordingly, 


Fig.  97. 


Fig.  98. 


Chinese  cameo,  (Pulszky  Coll.). 


Chinese  God. 


he  delights  in  treating  his  material  in  the  most  unsuitable  way, — 
transforming  ivory  into  lace ;  or  sculpturing,  from  hard  stone,  figures 
covered  with  a  net  of  unbroken  meshes.  He  startles  the  mind  by 
the  patience  with  which  he  makes  artistical  puzzles,  instead  of  ex- 
citing the  imagination  by  the  composition,  and  creating  delight 
through  the  purity  and  beauty  of  forms. 

The  preceding  two  heads  give  an  idea  of  the  type  of  the  YelloAV- 
race  and  its  art.  Fig.  97  is  the  smiling  portrait  of  a  high  functionary, 
from  a  cameo  in  my  collection.  Fig.  98,  the  head  of  the  frowning 
God  of  the  Polar  star,  comes  from  a  statuette  in  the  British  Museum. 
Both  of  them  are  intensely  characteristic  specimens  of  an  art  never 
influenced  by  foreign  agencies;  and  scarcely  showing  any  affinity 
with  the  sculptures,  either  of  our  classical  western,  or  of  the  conter- 
minous Hindoo  civilization. 

F.  P. 


CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS.  203 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   CRANIAL   CHARACTERISTICS   OF   THE   RACES   OF   MEN. 

BY  J.   AITKEN    MEIGS,   H.D, 
LIBRARIAN  OF  THE  ACADEMY  OF  NATOEAL   SCIENCES   OF  PHILADELPHIA,  FELLOW  OF  THE  COLLEGE  OF  PHYSICIANS,  ETC. 


Messrs.  Nott  and  Gliddon: 

My  Dear  Sirs. — In  answer  to  your  very  polite  request  of  June  14th,  that  I  should 
furnish  you  with  a  brief  statement  of  the  progress  and  present  condition  of  Human 
Cranioscopy,  and  the  intimate  and  important  relations  which  it  bears  to  the  great  problems 
of  Ethnology,  I  send  you  the  accompanying  sketch,  which  you  must  receive  mm  grano 
salts,  inasmuch  as  it  has  been  drawn  up  during  the  hot  and  oppressive  nights  of  mid- 
summer, and  amidst  the  exacting  interruptions  necessarily  attendant  upon  the  practice 
of  my  profession. 

Having,  as  you  are  aware,  devoted  some  portion  of  my  leisure  time,  during  the  summer 
of  1855,  to  arranging  and  classifying  the  magnificent  collection  of  the  late  Dr.  Morton, 
preparatory  to  issuing  a  fourth  edition  of  the  Catalogue  (the  MS.  of  which  was  presented 
to  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  in  December  last),  I  have  thought  proper  to  embody 
in  this  sketch  some  notice  of  the  additions  and  changes  which  this  Collection  has  under- 
gone since  the  demise  of  its  illustrious  founder.  In  attempting  to  set  forth,  in  a  general 
way,  the  cranial  characters  which  differentiate  the  Races  of  Men,  I  have  indicated  the 
true  value,  not  only  of  the  Collection  itself,  but  of  the  labors  of  Dr.  M.  also.  For  by 
determining  those  constant  differences  which  constitute  typical  forms  of  crania,  we  esta- 
blish the  fundamental,  anatomical  facts  or  principles  upon  which  a  true  classification  of  the 
human  family  must  be  erected. 

In  the  treatment  of  my  subject,  you  will  observe  that  I  have  confined  myself  chiefly  to  a 
simple  statement  of  facts,  carefully  and  designedly  abstaining  from  the  expression  of  any 
opinion  upon  the  prematurely,  and  perhaps,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  unwisely 
mooted  questions  of  the  origin  and  primitive  affiliations  of  man.  Not  a  little  study  and 
reflection  incline  me  to  the  belief  that  long  years  of  severe  and  earnest  research  are  yet 
necessary  before  we  can  pronounce  authoritatively  upon  these  ultimate  and  perplexing 
problems  of  Ethnology. 

Very  truly  yours,  &c, 
Philad.,  December.,  1856.  J.  AITKEN  MEIGS. 


204  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


"  How  much  may  the  anatomist  see  in  the  mere  skull  of  man !  How  much 
more  the  physiognomist !  And  how  much  the  most  the  anatomist,  who  is  a 
physiognomist !  I  blush  when  I  think  how  much  I  ought  to  know,  and  of 
how  much  I  am  ignorant,  while  writing  on  a  part  of  the  body  of  man  which 
is  so  superior  to  all  that  science- has  yet  discovered — to  all  belief,  to  all 
conception ! 

"I  consider  the  system  of  the  bones  as  the  great  outline  of  man,  and  the 
skull  as  the  principal  part  of  that  system." 

Lavatek,  Essays  on  Physiognomy. 

A  comprehensive  and  carefully  conducted  inquiry  into  the  cranial 
characteristics  of  the  races  of  men,  constitutes  a  subject  as  unlimited 
in  its  extent  and  variety,  as  it  is  important  in  its  results.  Such  an 
inquiry  is  essentially  the  zoological  consideration  of  man,  or,  in 
other  words,  the  consideration  of  man  as  a  member  of  the  great 
animal  series,  and  the  consequent  application  to  him  of  those  funda- 
mental laws  which  concern  the  subordination  of  parts,  and  the  esta- 
blishment and  correlation  of  specific  forms. 

The  first  step  in  this  inquiry,  is  the  determination  of  those  dif- 
ferences by  which  we  are  enabled  to  discriminate  between  the 
human  cranium  and  that  of  the  lower  orders  of  animals.  Lawrence 
long  ago  indicated,  in  his  valuable  Lectures,  the  importance  of  this 
procedure.  "As  the  monkey-race,"  says  he,  "approach  the  nearest 
to  man  in  structure  and  actions,  and  their  forms  are  so  much  like 
the  human,  as  to  have  procured  for  them  the  epithet,  anthropo- 
morphous, we  must  compare  them  to  man,  in  order  to  find  out  the 
specific  characters  of  the  latter;  and  we  must  institute  this  com- 
parison particularly  with  those  called  orang-outangs."1  Such  a 
comparison  between  the  cranium  of  a  negro  and  that  of  a  gorilla, 
has  been  admirably  drawn  by  Prof.  Owen.2  The  second  step  leads 
to  a  recognition  of  the  points  of  difference  and  resemblance  between 
the  crania  of  the  various  groups  composing  the  human  family.  Now 
in  elucidating  these  resemblances  and  differences,  we  lay  the  founda- 
tion of  anthropology,  or  man  zoologically  considered.  But  our 
cranioscopy,  to  be  properly  initiative  or  introductory  to  anthro- 
pology, must  be  comparative,  —  not  humanly  comparative  only,  but 
zoologically.  In  other  words,  as  naturalists — using  that  term  in 
its  most  comprehensive  sense — we  must  recognize  the  commence- 

1  Lectures  on  Comparative  Anatomy,   Physiology,  Zoology,  and  the  Natural  History  of 
Man.     By  Wm.  Lawrence,  F.R.S.     London,  1848,  p.  88. 

2  Descriptive  Catalogue  of  the  Osteological  Series  contained  in  the  Museum  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons.     II.  785.     1853. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF     MEN.  205 

ment  of  cranioscopy  in  the  lower  series.  If  we  first  compare  the 
crania  of  the  lowest  types  of  man  with  the  most  anthropoid  of  those 
of  the  monkey  group,  and  then  carefully  observe  the  nature  of  the 
relation  between  the  so-called  superior  and  inferior  forms  of  each 
group,  respectively,  and  finally  compare  these  relations  together,  we 
commence  our  studies  properly.  For  in  so  doing,  we  in  reality 
study  the  extent,  nature,  and  significance  of  the  wide  gap  which 
appears  effectually  to  separate  man  from  the  brute  creation.  I  say, 
appears  —  and  I  say  it  advisedly,  inasmuch  as  in  nature's  plan  there 
may  be  no  gap  at  all;  the  intervening  forms  may  have  become 
extinct,  they  may,  unknown  to  us,  be  living  in  some  unexplored 
regions  of  the  earth ;  or  they  may  yet  appear,  at  some  future  period, 
to  substantiate  that  harmonious  and  successional  unity  which  seems 
to  underlie  the  entire  system  of  the  universe. 

In  the  accompanying  table  will  be  found  a  series  of  figures  repre- 
senting the  juvenile,  or  immature,  and  adult  skulls  of  the  anthropo- 
morphous monkeys,  the  adult  or  permanent  forms  of  the  lower  types 
both  of  men  and  monkeys,  and,  lastly,  a  well-known  representation 
of  the  highest  form  of  the  "human  head  divine,"  —  all  arranged  in 
conformity  with  what  appears  to  be  the  indication  of  nature.  Such 
an  arrangement  shows  us,  at  a  glauce,  that  among  the  different  tribes 
of  monkeys,  as  among  the  various  races  of  men,  there  are  numerous 
types  or  forms  of  skull ;  that  for  each  of  these  natural  groups,  there 
is  a  gradation  of  cranial  forms ;  that  the  greatest  resemblances  be- 
tween the  two  groups  — ■  resemblances  indicating  the  existence  of  a 
transitionary  or  connecting  link  as  a  part  of  nature's  plan — are  to  be 
sought  for  in  or  between  the  lower  types  of  each,  and  not  between 
the  lowest  man  and  highest  monkey,  as  is  generally  supposed ;  that 
the  undeveloped  crania  of  the  Chimpanzee,  Orang,  and  other  higher 
types  of  monkeys,  more  closely  resemble  the  human  form  than  when 
fully  evolved ;  that  for  each  of  the  lower  human  types  of  skull,  there 
appears  to  exist  among  the  monkeys  a  rude  representative,  which 
seems  remotely  and  imperfectly  to  anticipate  the  typical  idea  of  the 
former,  and  to  bear  to  it  a  certain  ill-defined  relation ;  and,  lastly, 
that  the  best  formed  human  skull  stands  immensely  removed  from 
the  most  perfectly  elaborated  monkey  cranium. 

From  the  comparative  methods  above  referred  to,  we  learn  that 
the  human  head  differs  from  that  of  the  brute  creation  in  many  im- 
portant respects, — such  as  the  proportion  between  the  size  and  areas 
of  the  cranium  and  face,  the  relative  situation  of  the  face,  the  direc- 
tion and  prominence  of  the  maxilla;,  the  position  and  direction  of  the 
occipital  foramen,  the  proportion  of  the  facial  to  the  cranial  half  of 
the  occipito-mental  diameter,  in  the  absence  of  the  os  inter-maxillare, 


206 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


207 


in  the  number,  situation,  and  di- 
rection of  the  teeth,  &c.  These  are 
a  few  of  the  differential  elements 
which  separate  man  from  the  quad- 
rumana,  and  the  various  genera 
and  species  of  the  latter  from  each 
other.  But  the  chief  value  of  these 
osteological  differentia  lies  in  their 
perfect  applicability  to  man,  and 
the  facility  with  which  they  enable 
us  to  distinguish  between  the  vari- 
ous human  types.  Thus,  in  the 
best  developed  and  most  intellec- 
tual races,  the  supra-orbital  ridge 
is  smooth,  well  carved,  and  not 
much  developed;  as  we  descend 
towards  the  lower  types,  it  becomes 
more  and  more  marked,  until,  in 
the  African  and  Australian  heads, 
it  has  attained  its  maximum  de- 
velopment. In  the  Orang,  this 
feature  begins  to  assume  a  greater 
importance,  while  in  the  Chimpan- 
zee, its  enormous  size  renders  it  a 
characteristic  mark.  Here,  then, 
is  the  evidence,  to  some  extent,  of 
gradation,  in  a  seemingly  exclusive 
ethnographic  mark,  whose  signifi- 
cance is  elucidated  by  a  resort  to 
anthropology.  Again,  it  is  curious 
to  observe  how  certain  adult  animal 
characters  appear  in  man  during 
the  foetal  period  only.  Thus,  in 
some  mammals,  as  the  Rodentia 
and  Marsupialia,  we  find,  as  a  per- 
manent feature,  an  inter-parietal, 
bone.  In  man,  the  occipital  bone 
consists,  at  birth,  of  four  parts, 
which  are  not  consolidated  until 
about  the  fifth  or  sixth  year. 
Each  of  these  parts  is  developed 
from  distinct  ossific  centres.  For 
the  posterior  or  proral  portion,  an- 


208  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

atomists  generally  recognise  four  such  centres,  arranged  in  pairs,  the 
two  lower  uniting  first,  and  afterwards  the  two  upper,  so  that,  be* 
tween  this  superior  and  inferior  portion,  a  line  of  demarcation 
—  sutura  prorse  —  remains  until  the  time  of  birth.  According  to 
Meckel,  the  superior  portion  is  developed  from  two  bony  puneta. 
In  consequence  of  this  distinct  ossification,  the  superior  angle  of 
the  os  occipitis  continues  as  a  separate  piece  during  intra-uterine 
life,  as  was  long  ago  noticed  and  described  by  Gerard  Blasius, 
in  his  work  (Anatonie  Contractu)  published  at  Amsterdam,  in  1666. 
The  interest  attached  to  this  embryonic  feature  arises  from  its  re- 
markable persistence  as  a  triangular  inter-parietal  or  supra-occipital 
bone,  in  juvenile  Peruvian  skulls,  as  first  pointed  out  by  Dr.  P.  Bel- 
lamy, in  a  paper  read  before  the  Naturalists'  Society  of  Devon  and 
Cornwall,  and  afterwards  by  Dr.  Tschtjdi,  in  a  paper  on  the  ancient 
Peruvians.3  Dr.  Minchin,  in  a  recent  highly  philosophical  article, 
entitled,  Contributions  to  Craniology,4  while  contending  for  the  central 
or  vertical  origin  of  the  bi-parietal  bones,  is  disposed  to  question  the 
existence  of  this  supernumerary  bone  as  an  ordinary  normal  condi- 
tion of  foetal  life.  However,  his  argument  on  this  special  point  is  by 
no  means  conclusive.  The  os  inter-maxillare,  found  in  some  of  the 
Quadrumana  as  a  permanent  character,  has  also  been  demonstrated 
as  a  transitional  mark  in  the  human  embryo.5  Did  my  space  permit, 
other  examples  might  be  given,  illustrative  of  the  value  of  human 
embryology  as  a  guide  in  the  study  of  the  specific  and  generic  cha- 
racters of  the  animal  kingdom. 

The  want  of  information,  such  as  above  set  forth,  led  Monboddo 
and  Rousseau,  men  of  undoubted  learning,  to  speak  of  the  relation- 
ship of  the  genus  Homo  to  the  Quadrumana  in  terms  contradictory 
to  all  correct  anatomy  and  physiology.  "  II  est  bien  demontre,"  says 
Rousseau,  "  que  le  Singe  n'est  pas  une  variety  de  l'Homme,  non 
seulement  parcequ'il  est  prive  de  la  faculte  de  parler,  mais,  surtout, 
parcequ'on  est  sur  que  son  espece  n'a  point  la  faculte  de  se  perfec- 
tionner,  qui  est  le  caractere  specifique  de  l'espece  humaine;  —  expe- 
riences qui  ne  paroissent  pas  avoir  €t&  faites,  sur  le  Pongos  et 
l'Ourang-Outang,  avec  assez  de  soin,  pour  en  tirer  la  menie  conclu- 
sion."6 Monboddo,  less  cautious,  expressed  his  belief  in  the  specific 
identity  of  man  and  the  orang.  Even  White,  not  properly  under- 
standing Nature's  method  in  that  "  Gradation"  upon  which  he  wrote, 

3  Edinburgh  New  Philosophical  Journal,  1844,  p.  252. 

4  Dublin  Quarterly  Journal  of  Medical  Science,  Not.,  1856. 

6  See  some  remarks  on  the  inter-maxillary  bone,  by  Prof.  Leidy,  in  Quain  and  Sharpey's 
Human  Anatomy,  1st  Amer.  Edit.,  vol.  1,  p.  143. 
6  Discours  sur  les  Causes,  &c,  note  10. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  209 

speaks  of  the  orang  as  having  the  person,  manner,  and  actions  of 
man.7 

Still  higher  and  more  complex  propositions  engage  the  attention 
of  the  cranioscopist.  What  is  the  nature  of  the  skull  as  a  whole, 
and  what  is  the  nature  respectively  of  its  different  parts?  Why 
should  it  be  composed  of  22  hones,  and  no  more  ?  What  is  the 
meaning  of  the  sutures,  and  what  their  relation  to  individual  and 
race  forms  of  the  skull  ?  What  are  the  relations  of  the  cranium  to 
the  bony  skeleton  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  delicate  organ  of 
thought  and  sensation,  which  it  encloses,  on  the  other  ?  What  are 
the  laws  of  its  development  ?  When  has  it  obtained  its  full  growth, 
and  what  are  the  indications  of  this  fact  ?  Is  this  period  the  same 
in  all  the  varieties  of  men  ?  Does  the  cranium  give  form  to  the 
brain,  or,  vice-versa,  does  the  latter  mould  the  former  to  itself? 
What  are  the  relations  of  cranial  form  to  mental  and  moral  mani- 
festations,— "  to  capability  of  civilization,  and  actual  progress  in  arts, 
sciences,  literature,  government,  &c.  ?"  Is  there  one,  or  are  there  many 
primitive  cranial  types  or  forms  ?  If  one,  how  have  originated  the 
distinctions  which  we  now  perceive  ?  If  many,  what  are  the  distin- 
guishing peculiarities  of  the  primitive  forms  ?  Are  these  peculiari- 
ties primordial  and  constant,  or  can  they  be  adequately  accounted 
for  by  the  action  of  external  causes  ?  To  what  extent  is  the  form  of 
the  cranium  modified  by  climatic  conditions,  habits  of  life,  age,  sex, 
intermarriage,  &e.  ?  Does  intellectual  cultivation  modify  the  form 
of  the  skull  ?  Can  acquired  modifications  of  cranial  form  be  trans- 
mitted hereditarily  ?  If  so,  what  are  the  laws  of  this  transmission  ? 
Is  there  for  skull-forms,  as  Flourens  has  said  of  races,  "  an  art  of 
preserving  their  purity,  of  modifying  them,  altering  and  producing 
new  ones  ?"8  Are  the  few  leading  cranial  types  which  we  at  present 
encounter  in  the  human  family,  primary  results  of  certain  cosmo- 
gonie  causes,  which  ceased  to  act  the  moment  after  their  formation ; 
or,  are  they  the  secondary,  or  even  tertiary  and  quaternary  results, 
as  Count  de  Gobineau  supposes,  of  the  intermixture  of  races,  occur- 
ring at  periods  antedating  all  historical  and  monumental  record  ? 9 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  leading  questions  which  arise  from  a  thought- 
ful examination  of  the  human  cranium, — questions  which  I  indicate 
here,  rather  as  exemplifying  the  scope  and  philosophical  character  of 
cranioscopy,  than  with  the  view  of  answering  them  in  detail.     In- 

'  An  Account  of  the  Regular  Gradation  in  Man,  and  in  different  Animals  and  Vegetables, 
&c.     By  Chas.  White.     London,  1799. 

8  De  l'lnstinct  et  de  l'Intelligence  des  Animaux,  par  P.  Flourens :  3me  Edit.,  Paris,  1851, 
p.  121. 

9  Essai  sur  1'Inegalitg  des  Races  Humaines,  par  M.  A.  de  Gobineau :  Paris,  1853,  vol.  1, 
p.  245. 

14 


210  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

deed,  such  an  attempt,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  would 
be  premature,  and  therefore  liable  to  the  errors  inseparable  from 
hasty  examinations.  Some  of  these  questions,  it  is  true,  have  al- 
ready been  answered ;  some  are  being  solved  even  now ;  while  others, 
such  as  the  law  of  divergent  forms,  are  professedly  among  the  most 
obscure  problems  in  the  whole  range  of  scientific  inquiry.  Neverthe- 
less, I  call  the  attention  of  the  reader  to  a  brief  and  general  analysis 
of  some  of  the  most  prominent  of  these  subjects,  as  the  best  method 
of  showing  the  importance  of  this  newest  of  the  sciences,  its  nature 
and  power,  the  methods  of  procedure  adopted,  and  the  results  which 
may  reasonably  be  expected  to  flow  from  its  cultivation.  And  I 
do  this  designedly,  for  I  have  been  actuated,  in  contributing  this 
paper  to  a  popular  scientific  work,  with  the  desire  of  presenting  a 
novel,  and  with  me,  favorite  study,  in  its  proper  light  before  the  peo- 
ple, hoping  thereby  to  arrest  the  progress  of  certain  ill-founded  sus- 
picions, which,  in  some  quarters,  have  sprung  up  as  the  result  of  a 
fear  that  the  inquiry  was  detrimental,  instead  of  advantageous,  to  the 
best  interests  of  man. 

Cranioscopy  is  a  new  science.  Dating  from  the  time  of  Blumen- 
bach,  with  whom  it  fairly  begins,  it  is  scarcely  70  years  old ;  and  its 
cultivators,  even  at  the  present  moment,  number  but  a  few  names. 
Indeed,  so  little  attention  has  been  paid,  in  general,  to  the  Natural 
History  of  Man,  that  we  find  Lawrence,  so  late  as  the  summer  of 
1818,  expressing  himself  in  the  following  words  :10  "Accurate,  beau- 
tiful, and  expensive  engravings  have  been  executed  of  most  objects 
in  natural  history,  of  insects,  birds,  plants :  splendid  and  costly  pub- 
lications have  been  devoted  to  small  and  apparently  insignificant  de- 
partments of  this  science ;  yet  the  different  races  of  man  have  hardly, 
in  any  instance,  been  attentively  investigated,  described,  or  compared 
together:  no  one  has  approximated  and  surveyed  in  conjunction 
their  structure  and  powers :  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  delineate 
them,  I  will  not  say  on  a  large  and  comprehensive,  but  not  even  on 
a  small  and  contracted  scale ;  nobody  has  ever  thought  it  worth  while 
to  bestow  on  a  faithful  delineation  of  the  several  varieties  of  man 
one-tenth  of  the  labor  and  expense  which  have  been  lavished  again 
and  again  on  birds  of  paradise,  pigeons,  parrots,  humming-birds, 
beetles,  spiders,  and  many  other  such  objects.  Even  intelligent  and 
scientific  travellers  have  too  often  thrown  away  on  dress,  arms,  orna- 
ments,- utensils,  buildings,  landscapes,  and  obscure  antiquities,  the 
utmost  luxury  of  engraving  and  embellishment,  neglecting  entirely 
the  being,  without  reference  to  whom,  none  of  these  objects  possess 
either  value  or  interest.     In  many  very  expensive  works,  one  is  dis- 

io  Op.  eit.,  p.  84. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  211 

appointed  at  meetiug,  in  long  succession,  with  prints  of  costumes  — 
summer  dresses  and  winter  dresses,  court  and  common  dresses — the 
wearer,  in  the  meantime,  being  entirely  lost  sight  of.  The  immortal 
historian  of  nature  seems  to  have  alluded  to  this  strange  neglect  in 
observing,  '  quelqu'  interet  que  nous  ayons  a  nous  connaitre  nous 
memes,  je  ne  sais  si  nous  ne  connaissons  pas  mieus  tout  ce  qui  n'est 
pas  nous.'11  Indeed,  whether  we  investigate  the  physical  or  the  moral 
nature  of  man,  we  recognize  at  every  step  the  limited  extent  of  our 
knowledge,  and  are  obliged  to  confess  that  ignorance  which  a  Rous- 
seau and  a  Buffon  have  not  been  ashamed  to  avow."  —  "The  most 
useful,  and  the  least  successfully  cultivated  of  all  knowledge,  is  that 
of  man ;  and  the  description  on  the  temple  of  Delphi  (rvwdi  tfeaurov) 
contained  a  more  important  and  difficult  precept  than  all  the  books 
of  the  moralists."12  Twelve  years  after  this  was  written,  we  behold 
Dr.  Morton  compelled  to  conclude  a  lecture  upon  "  The  different 
Forms  of  the  Skull  as  exhibited  in  the  Five  Races  of  Men,"  without 
being  able  to  present  to  his  audience  either  a  Mongolian  or  a  Malay 
skull.13  Our  surprise  at  this  will  be  somewhat  lessened,  however, 
when  we  call  to  mind  the  fact  that,  at  this  time,  the  celebrated  Blu- 
menbachian  collection  contained  but  65  skulls.  And  now,  in  1856, 
we  are  again  reminded,  by  a  British  ethnographer,  of  the  difficulties 
which  beset  the  study  of  cranioscopical  science.  "  It  is  truly  surpri- 
sing," says  Davis,  "how  great  the  destruction  of  human  crania, 
all-important  for  our  design,  has  been,  and  how  rapidly  all  such 
genuine  remains  of  the  Britons,  Romans,  and  Anglo-Saxons  are  now 
escaping  from  the  grasp  of  science.  The  progressive  enclosure  of 
our  wild  tracts,  the  extension  of  cultivation,  and  the  introduction  of 
a  more  perfect  agriculture,  have  in  modern  times  destroyed  multi- 
tudes of  the  oldest  sepulchres,  and  all  that  they  contained.  And  it 
is  unfortunate  that  the  researches  of  antiquaries,  who  have  opened 
barrows  and  excavated  cemeteries  with  inquiring  eyes,  have  been 
almost  equally  fatal  to  the  cranial  remains  of  their  occupants.  Arms, 
personal  ornaments,  and  other  relics  deposited  with  the  dead,  have 
generally  engrossed  attention,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  tender  and 
fragile  bones  of  their  possessors."14    Notwithstanding  these  obstacles, 

11  Buffon,  "De  la  Nature  de  l'Homnie,"  Histoire  Naturelle  Ge'ne'rale  et  Particuliere.  Paris, 
1749,  T.  2,  p.  429. 

12  Discours  sur  l'lnegalite" ;  Preface. 

13  Letter  to  J.  R.  Bartlett,  Esq.,  Transactions  of  the  American  Ethnological  Society,  Vol. 
ii.,  New  York,  1848,  p.  217. 

14  Crania  Britannica.  Delineations  and  Descriptions  of  the  Skulls  of  the  Early  Inhabitants 
of  the  British  Islands ;  together  with  Notices  of  their  other  Remains.  By  J.  Barnard  Davis, 
M.  R.  C.  S.,  F.  S.  A.,  etc.,  and  John  Thurnam,  M.  D.,  F.  S.  A.,  &c.  London,  1856,  Decade 
I.,  p.  2.     Judging  from  the  first  decade,  this  admirable  work  promises,  when  completed,  to 


212  THE     CRANIAL     C  H  A  R  A  C  T  E  E  I  S  T  I  C  S 

however,  it  is  cheering  to  know  that  the  labors  of  Blumenbach, 
Morton,  Prichard,  Lawrence,  Retzius,  ISTilsson,  and  others,  have 
at  length  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  a  Thesaurus  Uthnologieus, 
consisting  of  a  vast  number  of  well-ascertained  facts  waiting  the 
application  of  more  efficient  methods  of  generalization. 

Again,  the  novelty  of  the  science,  the  startling  character  of  some 
of  its  propositions,  and  the  unfortunate  errors  which  have  been  foisted 
upon  it  by  certain  hasty  theorizers,  whose  speculative  zeal  has  outrun 
the  slow  accumulation  of  facts ;  and  its  apparent  relation  to  a  dubious 
science,ls  have  all  conspired  to  bring  the  cranioscopical  department  of 
Human  Natural  History  into  disrepute.  But  its  political  importance 
alone  outweighs  these  errors  ;  for  amidst  its  manifold  details  we  must 
seek  for  the  reasons  of  the  diversities  so  evident  in  the  human  family ; 
the  extent,  permanence,  and  meaning  of  these  diversities ;  and  the 
best  means  of  harmonizing  the  discrepancies  in  modes  of  thought 
and  action  flowing  therefrom.  It  endeavors  to  elucidate  the  societary 
condition  of  man  by  appealing  to  a  correct  anatomy  and  physiology, 
and  the  zoological  laws  based  upon  these.  Not  a  few  ethnologists 
have  indicated  its  importance  in  their  writings.  Thus  Courtet  de 
Lisle16  attempts  —  and  I  think  successfully  —  to  show  that  Political 
Economy  is  necessarily  founded  upon  our  science.  Knox"  and 
Ellis18  dwell  with  emphasis  upon  its  political  significance,  while  the 
Count  de  Gobineatj19  seeks  in  it  the  solution  of  those  sudden  and 
apparently  inexplicable  changes  which  have  given  to  European  his- 
tory so  enigmatical  a  character.  A  moment's  reflection  will  show 
that  the  connection  here  attempted  to  be  established  is  a  perfectly 
logical  one.     If  the  acts  of  an  individual  are  to  a  considerable  extent 

constitute  the  most  valuable  contribution  to  Ethnography  that  has  appeared  since  the  pub- 
lication of  the  Crania  iEgyptiaca  of  Morton.  The  text  betrays  evidence  of  much  thought, 
extensive  research,  and  critical  observation  of  a  high  character,  while  the  numerous 
lithographic  representations  of  ancient  British  and  Roman  Crania  are  executed  in  the  finest 
style  of  art. 

15  The  fundamental  propositions  of  Phrenology  are  equally  true  of  Cranioscopy.  Of  the 
truth  of  these  propositions,  there  can  be  little  doubt.  Comparative  Anatomy,  Physiology, 
and  Pathology,  all  tend  to  substantiate  the  multiple  character  of  the  structure  and  function 
of  the  brain,  and  demonstrate  that  mind  is  not  only  connected  with  brain,  but  connected 
with  a  particular  portion  of  it.  Little  doubt  can  be  entertained  of  the  general  adaptation 
of  the  skull  to  its  contents.  Thus  mind,  brain,  and  cranium  are  connected.  Thus  far 
science  confirms  Phrenology;  but  in  the  "mapping-out  details,"  to  which  the  followers  of 
Gall  and  Spurzheim  have  so  unwarrantably  resorted,  Phrenology  is  no  longer  a  science. 

16  La  Science  Politique  fondle  sur  la  Science  de  l'Homme,  &c,  par  V.  Courtet  de  Lisle. 
Paris,  1838. 

17  The  Races  of  Men:  a  Fragment,  by  Robert  Knox,  M.D.,  &c.  Amer.  Edit.,  Philada., 
1850. 

18  Irish  Ethnology,  Socially  and  Politically  Considered,  by  Geo.  Ellis.    Dublin,  1852. 
"  Op.  cit. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  213 

the  outward  expressions,  or  functional  manifestations  of  the  organ- 
ism, and  if  the  acts  of  a  society  are  the  sum  total  of  the  individual 
acts  of  its  members,  then  it  necessarily  follows,  that  the  civil  history 
of  a  nation  in  great  measure  arises  from,  and  is  dependent  upon,  the 
natural  or  physical  characters  of  its  citizens.  Thus,  then,  paradoxical 
as  it  may  seem,  the  polygamy  of  the  Orient,  the  cannibalism  of  the 
South  Sea  Islands,  the  differences  between  the  civilizations  of  Europe 
and  Asia,  between  the  artistic  powers  of  the  negro  and  the  "  Cauca- 
sian," are  so  many  indications  of  the  philosophical  value  of  human 
osteology. 

But  to  the  American  citizen,  especially,  does  our  science  recom- 
mend itself  as  one  worthy  of  all  consideration,  since  upon  American 
soil,  representatives  from  nearly  all  parts  of  the  earth  have  been 
gathering  together  during  the  last  two  hundred  years.  The  peaceful 
and  semi-civilized  Toltecan  man — once  the  proud  master  of  our  con- 
tinent, which  he  busily  dotted  with  forts  and  mounds,  with  mighty 
monuments  and  great  cities — has  just  been  swept  away  by  the  unre- 
lenting hand  of  the  longer-headed  but  less  intellectual  nomade  of  the 
North — the  red  Indian — who,  in  his  turn,  is  suffering  annihilation  in 
the  presence  of,  and  by  contact  with  the  yet  larger-headed  Teuton  of 
Europe.  "While  the  lozenge-faced  Eskimo  of  our  Polar  coastline  is 
mysteriously  fading  away,  under  the  action  of  influences  tending  to 
render  the  extreme  north  an  uninhabited  waste,20  from  the  old  world 
a  steady  stream  of  human  life,  a  heterogeneous  exodus  of  various 
races  of  men,  is  inundating  our  soil,  and  threatening  to  change  our 
entire  political  aspect  by  the  introduction  of  novel  physical  and 
intellectual  elements.  The  Scandinavian,  the  German,  the  Sclavo- 
nian,  and  the  Kelt  of  Southern  Europe,  the  follower  of  Mahomet,  and 
the  disciple  of  Confucius,  the  aboriginal  Red  Man,  and  the  unhappy 
children  of  Africa,  have  in  congress  assembled  in  the  New  World — 
not  brought  together  fortuitously,  for  chance  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  history  and  destiny  of  nations — but  impelled  by  laws  of  humani- 
tarian progress  and  change,  as  yet  improperly  understood.  All  these 
have  assembled  to  work  out  the  problem  of  human  destiny  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  stability  of  our  boasted  republic  on  the  other. 
Let  the  American  reader  steadily  contemplate  this  picture,  and  study 
its  details ;  let  him  give  ear  to  some  of  the  momentous  questions 
which  are  anxiously  disturbing  the  peace  and  quietness  of  this  con- 
gress, —  the  ultimate  disposition,  for  example,  of  the  prognathous 
man,  imported  by  our  English  forefathers,  and  left  with  us,  a  fearful 
element  of  discord, — the  operations  of  the  "  manifest  destiny  princi- 

»  See  The  Natural  History  of  the  Human  Species,  &o.,  By  Lieut.  Col.  Chas.  Hamilton 
Smith;   edited  by  S.  Kneeland,  Jr.,  M.  D.     Boston,  1851,  p.  294. 


214  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

pie"  in  the  ISTicarauguan  Republic,  &c.  Furthermore,  let  him  con- 
template the  members  of  our  National  Legislature  daily  debating 
questions  involving  the  antipathies  and  affiliations  of  the  races  of 
men,  without  the  slightest  notion  of  their  true  ethnological  import ; 
let  him  not  be  unmindful,  also,  of  the  various  political  parties  and 
secret  associations  which  have  suddenly  sprung  up  in  our  midst,  and 
are  based  upon  ethnical  peculiarities ;  let  him  behold  the  Chinaman 
celebrating  his  polytheistic  worship  in  the  heart  of  a  Christian  com- 
munity, and  within  the  shadow  of  a  Christian  temple ;  while  upon 
Beaver  Island,  and  about  Salt  Lake,  another  institution  of  the  East, 
polygamy,  flourishes  in  rank  luxuriance.  Let  the  American  reader, 
I  say,  contemplate  all  this,  and  in  his  anxiety  to  know  the  causes  of 
these  strange  phenomena,  the  labors  of  the  cranioscopist,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  those  of  the  philosophical  historian  will  assume  their  full 
importance. 

From  a  long  and  comprehensive  study  of  history,  a  European 
thinker,1  of  profound  erudition,  has  at  length,  in  the  diversified 
ethnographic  peculiarities  of  the  different  races  of  men,  detected  and 
formuled  the  cause  of  the  apparently  mysterious  revolutions  and 
final  decadence  of  once-flourishing  nations. — "Toute  agglomeration 
humaine,  meme  j>rotegee  par  la  complication  la  plus  ingenieuse  de 
liens  soeiaux,  contracte,  au  jour  meme  ou  elle  se  forme,  et  cache 
parmi  les  elements  de  sa  vie,  le  principe  d'une  mort  inevitable.  .  .  . 
Oui,  reellement  c'est  dans  le  sein  meme  d'un  corps  social  qu'existe 
la  cause  de  sa  dissolution ;  mais,  quelle  est  cette  cause  ? — La  degene- 
ration, fut-il  replique ;  les  nations  meurent  lorsqu'elles  sont  composees 

d'elements  digeneres Je  pense  done  que  le  mot  degenere, 

s'appliquant  a  un  peuple,  doit  signifier,  et  signifie  que  ce  peuple  n'a 
plus  la  valeur  intrinseque  qu'autrefois  il  possedait,  paree  qu'il  n'a 
plus  dans  ses  veines  le  meme  sang  dont  des  alliages  successifs  ont 
graduellement  modifie  la  valeur;  autrement  dit,  qu'avec  le  meme 
nom,  il  n'a  pas  conserve  la  meme  race  que  ses  fondateurs ;  enfin,  que 
l'homme  de  la  decadence,  celui  qu'on  appelle  l'homme  degenere,  est 
un  produit  different,  au  point  de  vue  ethnique,  du  heros  des  grandes 
epoques.     Je  veux  bien  qu'il  possede  quelque  chose  de  son  essence ; 

mais,  plus  il  degenere,  plus  ce  quelque  chose  s'attenue Il 

mourra  definitivement,  et  sa  civilisation  avec  lui,  le  jour  oil  l'element 
ethnique  primordial  se  trouvera  tenement  sub-divise  et  noye  dans  des 
apports  de  races  etrangeres,  que  la  virtualite  de  cet  element  n'exer- 
cera  plus  desormais  d'action  suffisante." 

Undoubtedly,  the  Science  of  Man  commences  with  Buffon  and 
Linn^ius — Buftbn  first  in  merit,  though  second  in  the  order  of  time. 

21  De  Gobineau,  op.  cit.,  pp.  3,  38,  39,  40. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF   -MEN.  215 

By  the  writers  anterior  to  their  day,  but  little  was  done  for  human 
physical  history.  Among  the  classical  authors,  Thucydides,  the  type 
of  the  Grecian  historians,  treated  of  man  in  his  moral  and  political 
aspects  only.  The  nearest  approximation  to  a  physical  history  is 
contained  in  his  sketch  of  the  manners  and  migrations  of  the  early 
Greeks,  and  in  his  history  of  the  Greek  colonization  of  Sicily.  The 
books  of  Herodotus  have  more  of  an  ethnographic  character,  in 
consequence  of  the  account  which  he  gives  of  the  physical  appear- 
ance of  certain  nations,  whose  history  he  records.  Hippocrates  theo- 
rizes upon  the  influence  of  external  conditions  upon  man.  Aristotle 
and  Plato  also  distantly  allude  to  man  in  his  zoological  character. 
From  the  Romans  we  derive  some  accounts  of  the  people  of  North 
Africa,  of  the  Jews  and  ancient  Germans,  and  of  the  tribes  of  Gaul 
and  Britain.  Of  these,  as  Latham  has  appropriately  observed,  "the 
Germania  of  Tacitus  is  the  nearest  approach  to  proper  ethnology 
that  antiquity  has  supplied." 

Linnaeus  and  Buffon,  in  their  valuation  of  external  characters  — 
such  as  color  of  skin,  hair,  &c, — bestowed  no  attention  upon  the 
osseous  frame-work.  Of  cranial  tests,  and  of  bony  characters  in 
general,  they  knew  nothing,  or,  knowing,  considered  them  of  no 
value.  Hence,  although  Linjletjs,  in  his  Systema  Naturse,  brought 
together  the  genera  Homo  and  Simia,  under  the  general  title  Antliro- 
pomorpha,  and  although  Buffon,  filled  with  the  importance  of  human 
Natural  History,  devoted  a  long  chapter  to  the  varieties  of  the  human 
species,  yet  the  first  truly  philosophical  and  practical  recognition  of 
the  zoological  relations  of  man  appears  in  the  anthropological  intro- 
duction with  which  the  illustrious  Cuvier  commences  his  far-famed 
Regne  Animal. 

By  the  publication  of  his  Decades  Craniorum — commenced  in  1790, 
and  completed  in  1828 — Blumenbach  early  occupied  the  field  of  the 
comparative  cranioscopy  of  the  Races  of  Men.  In  consequence  of 
the  application  of  the  zoological  method  of  inquiry  to  the  elucidation 
of  human  natural  history,  that  work  at  once  gave  a  decided  impulse 
to  the  science  of  Ethnography,  and  for  a  long  time  exerted  a  consi- 
derable influence  on  the  views  of  subsequent  writers  upon  this  and 
kindred  subjects.  Unable  to  satisfy  the  constantly  increasing  de- 
mands of  the  present  day,  its  importance  has  sensibly  diminished. 
The  general  brevity  of  the  descriptions,  the  want  of  both  absolute 
and  relative  measurements,  and  the  defective  three-quarter  and  other 
oblique  views  of  many  of  the  skulls,  render  it  highly  unsatisfactory 
to  the  practical  cranioscopist.  Moreover,  the  number  of  crania 
(sixty-five)  possessed  by  Blumenbach  was  too  small,  not  only  to  esta- 
blish the  characteristics  of  the  central  or  standard  cranial  type  of 


216  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

each  of  the  many  distinct  groups  composing  the  human  family,  but 
was  also  found  to  be  inadequate  to  demonstrate  the  extent,  relatione, 
and  true  value  of  the  naturally  divergent  forms  of  each  group.  Prior 
to  the  time  of  Blumenbach,  however,  Daubenton  had  already  written 
the  first  chapter  in  cranial  osteology,  by  his  observations  on  the  basis 
cranii,  and  the  variations  in  the  position  of  the  foramen  magnum 
occipitis.22  For  the  second  chapter  —  the  study  of  the  cranium  in 
profile — we  are  indebted  to  Camper,  who  identified  his  name  with  the 
facial  angle.23  Scemmering  applied  the  occipito-frontal  arch,  the 
horizontal  periphery,  and  longitudinal  and  transverse  diameters  of 
the  cranium  to  demonstrate  the  differences  between  the  heads  of 
Europeans  and  Negroes.24  During  the  publication  of  the  Decades, 
the  celebrated  Jno.  Hunter,  of  London,  began  his  scientifico-medical 
career  with  an  inaugural  thesis  upon  the  subjects  under  considera- 
tion.25 Nineteen  years  after  the  publication  of  the  pentad,  by  which 
the  sis  decades  of  Blumenbach  were  completed,  Morton's  great  and 
original  work,  the  Crania  Americana,  was  given  to  the  world.26  From 
that  time,  human  cranioscopy  asserted  its  claims  to  scientific  consi- 
deration, and  gave  a  decided  impetus  to  anthropology.  In  1844, 
from  the  same  pen,  apeared  the  Crania  JEgyptiaca™  which  Prichard 
hailed  as  a  most  interesting  and  really  important  addition  to  our 
knowledge  of  the  physical  character  of  the  ancient  Egyptians.28 

The  only  elaborate  English  contribution  to  cranioscopy,  is  the 
Crania  Britannica  of  Messrs.  Davis  &  Thurnam,  the  first  decade  of 
which  has  but  recently  been  issued  from  the  British  press.  To  the 
sterling  merits  of  this  work  allusion  has  already  been  made.  Of  the 
scientific  labors  of  those  eminent  Scandinavian  craniologists  and 
antiquarians,  Professors  Retzius  of  Stockholm,  Mlsson  of  Lund,  and 
Eschricht  of  Copenhagen,  I  need  not  here  speak.  To  the  ethno- 
graphic student  the  writings  of  these  savants  have  been  long  and 
favorably  known.     The  French  have  done  but  little  in  this  particu- 

22  See  Memoirs  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  for  1764.  Sur  la  Difference  du  Grand 
Trou  occipital  dans  V Homme  et  dans  les  autres  Animaux. 

23  Dissertation  snr  les  Varie'tfe  Naturelles,  &c,  ouvrage  posthume  de  M.  P.  Camper.  Paris, 
1792. 

24  Ueber  die  Korperliche  Verschiedenheit  des  Negers  vom  Europaer.  Frankfurt  und 
Mainz,  1785,  p.  50,  et  seq. 

25  Disputatio  Inauguralis  qusedam  de  Hominum  Varietatibus  et  harum  cansis  exponens, 
&c.     Johannes  Hunter,  Edinburgi,  1775. 

26  Crania  Americana ;  or  a  Comparative  View  of  the  Skulls  of  various  Aboriginal  Nations 
of  North  and  South  America,  &c.     By  Samuel  George  Morton,  M.  D.     Philada.,  1839. 

21  Crania  iEgyptiaca ;  or,  Observations  on  Egyptian  Ethnography,  &c.  By  Samuel  George 
Morton,  M.  D.  Philada.,  1844.  Published  originally  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Amer. 
Philosoph.  Society,  vol.  IX. 

28  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  3d  edit.  p.  570. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  217 

lar  department  of  science.  The  names  of  Serres,  Foville,20  Gosse,30 
Dunioutier,  Blanchard,31  and  others,  however,  are  hefore  the  public 
in  this  connection.  As  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain,  cra- 
niology  has  received  more  attention  at  the  hands  of  the  Germans. 
Prof.  Engel,  of  Prague,  has  given  us  a  philosophical  dissertation 
upon  cranial  forms,  the  mensuration  of  the  skull,  &c.32  To  Prof. 
Zeune,  we  are  indebted  for  a  classification  of  skulls.33  Dr.  C.  G. 
Carus,  in  an  elementary  work  on  Cranioscopy,  indicates  and  developes 
to  some  extent  the  principles  which  should  guide  us  in  our  examina- 
tion of  the  different  cranial  formations,  in  their  relation  to  psychical 
conditions.34  In  a  subsequent  work,  he  comments  upon  and  explains 
these  principles  more  fully.35  Passing  over  the  names  of  Bidder,36 
Bruch,37Spo3ndli,38Kblliker,38A7irchow,40Lucffi,'nFitzinger42 and  others, 
I  must  conclude  this  hasty  enumeration  by  calling  attention  to  the 
laborious  and  masterly  work  of  Prof.  Huschke,  of  Jena, — the  result, 
as  we  are  informed  in  the  preface,  of  nine  years  study  and  reflection.43 
With  the  exception  of  an  admirable  paper  on  the  Admeasurements 
of  Crania  of  the  principal  groups  of  Indians  of  the  United  States,  con- 
tributed by  Mr.  J.  S.  Philips  to  the  Second  Part  of  Schoolcraft's 
work  on  the  Aboriginal  Races  of  America,44  nothing  has  been  done 
for  craniology  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  since  the  demise  of  Dr. 
Morton.     Indeed,  the  labors  of  Morton  embody  not  only  all  that 

26  Deformation  du  Criine  resultant  de  la  ra^thode  la  plus  generale  de  couvrir  la  Tete  des 
Enfants,  1834.  Also,  Traits  complet  de  l'Anatomie,  de  la  Physiologie  et  de  la  Pathologie 
du  Systeme  Nerveux,  1844. 

30  Essai  sur  les  Deformations  artificielles  du  Crane.     Paris,  1855. 

31  Voyage  au  Pole  Sud  et  dans  l'0c6anie,  &c,  Anthropologic,  Atlas  par  Dr.  Dumoutier; 
texte  par  Emile  Blanchard.     Paris,  1854. 

32  Untersuchungen  uber  Schadelformen.     Von  Dr.  Joseph  Engel,  Prof.,  Prag,  1851. 

33  Uber  Sch'adelbildung  zur  festern  Begriindung  der  Menschenrassen.  Von  Dr.  A.  Zeune. 
Berlin,  1846. 

34  Grundziige  einer  neuen  und  wissenschaftlich  begriindeten  cranioscopie  (Sch'adelehre) 
von  Dr.  C.  G.  Carus.     Stuttgart,  1841. 

35  Atlas  der  Cranioscopie  oder  Abbildungen  der  Schsedel-  und  Antlitzformen  Beruehnrter 
oder  sonst  merkwuerdiger  Personen  von  Dr.  C.  G.  Cams.    Leipzig,  1843. 

36  De  Cranii  Conformatione.     Dorpat,  1847. 

37  Beitrage  zur  Entwickelung  des  Knochensystems. 

38  Ueber  den  Primordialschadel.     Zurich,  1846. 

39  Tbeorie  des  Primordialschadels.     (Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche  Zoologie.     2  Bd.) 

40  Ueber  den  Cretinismus,  namentlich  in  Franken  und  iiber  pathologische  Schadelformen. 
(Verhaudl.  der  physik.  — medic.  Gesellschaft  in  Wiirzburg,  1852,  2  Bd.) 

a  De  facie  humana,  Heidelbergse,  1812. — De  Symmetria  et  Asymmetria  organorum  anim- 
alitatis,  imprimis  cranii,  Marburgi,  1839. — Schadel  abnormer  Form  in  Geometrischen  Abbil- 
dungen,  von  Dr.  J.  C.  G.  Lucse.     Frank,  am  Main,  1855. 

42  Uber  die  Schadel  der  Avaren,  &c.     Von  L.  J.  Fitzinger.     Wien.,  1853. 

43  Schsedel,  Hirn  und  Seele  des  Menschen  und  der  Thiere  nach  alter,  Geschlecht  und 
Race  dargestellt  nach  neuen  methoden  und  Untersuchungen  von  Emil  Huschke.    Jena,  1 854. 

44  Information  respecting  the  History,  Condition,  and  Prospects  of  the  Indian  Tribes 
of  the  United  States.     By  H.  R.  Schoolcraft.     Part  II.     Philadelphia,  1852. 


218  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

has  been  accomplished  for  this  science  in  America,  hut  also  the 
chief  part  of  all  the  contributions  which  it  has,  from  time  to  time, 
received  from  different  sources.  It  is  well  known  to  the  ethnolo- 
gical world,  that  at  the  time  of  his  death  (1851),  he  was  slowly  and 
carefully  maturing  his  views  upon  the  great  leading  questions  of 
his  favorite  science,  by  researches  of  the  most  varied  and  extensive 
character.  From  the  cranioscopical  details  which  constitute  so  im- 
portant a  feature  in  that  elaborate  work,  the  Crania  Americana,  he 
had  beeu  gradually  and  almost  insensibly  led  to  occupy  a  more 
comprehensive  field  —  a  field  embracing  ethnology  in  its  physiolo- 
gical and  archaeological  aspects.  The  Crania  JEgyptiaca  was  the 
forerunner  of  a  contemplated  series  of  philosophical  generalizations 
in  Anthropology, — the  matured  and  positive  conclusions  of  years 
of  severe  and  cautious  study.  In  this  series,  so  long  contemplated, 
so  often  delayed  for  critical  examination,  and  at  last  so  unexpectedly, 
and  I  may  add,  so  unfortunately  arrested,  Dr.  Morton  fondly  hoped 
to  develope  and  clearly  demonstrate  the  fundamental  principles  or 
elements  of  scientific  ethnology.  But  Providence  had  ordered  other- 
wise ;  for  at  this  critical  juncture  —  so  critical  for  the  proper  expo- 
sition of  Dr.  M.'s  long  treasured  and  anxiously  examined  views,  as 
well  as  for  the  proper  direction  of  the  infant  science — he  was  stricken 
down,  and  the  rich  mental  gatherings  of  a  life-time  dissipated  in  a 
moment.45 

Through  the  munificent  kindness  of  a  number  of  our  citizens,  his 
magnificent  collection  of  Human  Crania,  recently  increased  by  the 
receipt  of  sixty-seven  skulls  from  various  sources,  has  been  perma- 
nently deposited  in  the  Museum  of  the  Academy,46  a  silent  but 
expressive  witness  of  the  scientific  zeal,  industry,  and  singleness  of 
purpose  of  one  who,  to  use  the  language  of  Mr.  Davis,  "  has  the 
rare  merit,  after  the  distinguished  Gottingen  Professor,  of  having 
by  his  genius  laid  the  proper  basis  of  this  science,  and  by  his 
labors  raised  upon  this  foundation  the  two  first  permanent  and 
beautiful  superstructures,  in  the  Crania  Americana,  and  the  Crania 
JEgyptiaca."47 

Prior  to  his  decease,  Dr.  M.  had  received  about  100  crania,  in 
addition  to  those  mentioned  in  the  third  edition  of  his  Catalogue. 
Since  1849,  therefore,  the  collection  has  been  augmented  by  the 
addition  of  167  skulls.  Very  recently  I  have  carefully  inspected, 
re-arranged,  and  labelled  it,  and  prepared  for  publication  a  new  and 
corrected  edition  of  the  Catalogue.  At  present  the  collection  em- 
braces 1035  crania,  representing  more  than  150  different  nations, 

45  Unpublished  Introduction  to  "  Descriptions  and  Delineations  of  Skulls  in  the  Mortonian 
Collection." 

46  See  Proceedings  of  the  Academy,  Vol.  VI.  pp.  321,  324. 
*'  Crania  Britannica,  decade  I.,  p.  1. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


219 


tribes,  and  races.  It  occupies  sixteen  cases  on  the  first  gallery,  on 
the  south  side  of  the  lower  room  of  the  Museum.  For  convenience 
of  study  and  examination,  I  have  grouped  it  according  to  Race, 
Family,  Tribe,  &c,  strictly  adhering,  however,  to  the  classification 
of  Dr.  Morton. 

The  crania  are  distributed  as  follows  i48 


I.  Caucasian  Group. 

1.   Scandinavian  Race. 

Norwegian 1 

Swedish  Peasants 7 

Finland  Swedes 2 

Suderinanland  Swedes 3 

Ostrogoth 1 

Turannic  Swede 1 

Cimbric  Swedes..., 3 

Swedish  Finns 3 

21 
2.  Finnish  or  Tchudic  Race. 
True  Finns 10 

3.  Suevic  Race. 

Germans 11 

Dutchman 1 

Prussians 4 

Burgundian 1 


4.  Anglo-Saxon. 


English.. 


5.  Anglo- American. 

6.    Celtic  Race. 
Irish 

Celtic  (?)  heads  from  Catacombs  of  Paris, 
Celt  (?)  from  the  field  of  Waterloo 


17 

4 


7.  Sclavonic  Race. 
Sclavonians 

8.  Pelasgic  Race.*9 

Ancient  Phoenician 

Ancient  Roman 

Greek 

Circassians 

Armenians 

Parsees 


4 
1 

13 

2 


Affghan 1 

Grseco-Egyptians 23 

39 
9.   Semitic  Race. 

Arabs 5 

Hebrews 8 

Abyssinian 1 


10.  Berber  Race.  (T 


Guanche\ 


14 
1 


11.  Nilotic  Race. 

Ancient  Theban  Egyptians 34 

"       Memphite      "         17 

"       Abydos           "         2 

"       Alexandrian"         3 

Egyptians  from  Gizeh 16 

Kens  or  Ancient  Nubians 4 

Ombite  Egyptians 3 

Maabdeh  Egyptians 4 

Miscellaneous 5 

Fellahs 19 

107 
12.   Indostanic  Race. 

Ayras  (?) 6 

Thuggs 2 

Bengalese 32 

Uncertain 3 

43 
13.   Indo-Chinese  Race. 

Burmese 2 

II.  Mongolian  Group. 
1.    Chinese  Race. 

Chinese 11 

Japanese 1 

12 


ie  It  is  proper  to  observe,  that  the  above  table  is  not  an  attempt  at  scientific  classification, 
but  simply  an  arrangement  adopted  for  convenience  of  study  and  examination. 

49  Dr.  Morton  used  the  term  Pelasgic  too  comprehensively.  The  Circassians,  Armenians 
and  Persians  should  not  be  placed  in  this  group. 


220 


THE     CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


2.  Hyperborean  Race. 

Burat  Mongol 1 

Kainschatkan  1 

Kalmuck 1 

Laplanders 4 

Hybrid  Laplander 1 

Eskimo 6 

14 

III.  Malay  Group. 
1.  Malayan  Race. 

Malays 24 

Dyaks 2 

26 
2.  Polynesian  Race. 

Kanakas 7 

New  Zealanders 4 

Marquesas 1 

12 

IV.  American  Group. 
1.   Barbarous  Race, 
a.  North  Americans. 

Arickarees..  3 

Assinaboins 3 

Chenouks 8 

Oregonians 6 

Cherokees 6 

Chetimaches 2 

Chippeways 2 

Cotonays 3 

Creeks 4 

Dacotas 2 

Hurons 4 

Iroquois 3 

Illinois 2 

Klikatat 1 

Lenapes 10 

Mandans 7 

Menominees 7 

Miamis 12 

Minetaris 4 

Mohawks 3 

Naas 2 

Narragansets 10 

Natchez 2 

Naticks 5 

Nisqually 1 

Osages 2 

Otoes  ... 4 

Ottawas 4 

Ottigamies...,, 4 

Pawnees 2 


Fenobscots 2 

Pottawatomies 4 

Sauks 3 

Seminoles 16 

Shawnees 4 

Shoshones 4 

Upsarookas 2 

Winnebagos 2 

Yamassees 3 

Californians 2 

Miscellaneous 46 

216 
b.   Central  Americans. 

Maya 1 

Fragments  from  Yucatan 2 

3 
c.  South  Americans. 

Araucanians 12 

From  Mounds 2 

Charibs 3 

Pat&gonians 3 

Brazilian 7 

27 
2.   Toltecan  Race. 

a.   Peruvian  Family. 

Aricans 20 

Pachacamac 104 

Pisco 62 

Santa 8 

Lima 7 

Callao 3 

Miscellaneous 9 

Elongated  skulls  from  Titicaca,  &c.  ...  8 

221 
b.  Mexican  Family. 

Ancient  Mexicans 24 

Modern  Mexicans 9 

Lipans 2 

35 

V.  Negro  Group. 
1.  American  born,  16 

2.  Native  Africans,  88 

3.  Hovas,  2 

4.  Alforian  Race. 

Australians 11 

Oceanic  Negroes 2 

119 


OF     THE     EACES    OF    MEN. 


221 


VI.  Mixed  Eaces. 

Copts 6 

Negroid  Egyptians 12 

Nubians 4 

Hispano-Peruvian 2 

Negroid-Indian 3 

Hispano-Indian 1 


Malayo-Chinese 1 

Mulattoes 2 


VII.    Lt/NATICS    AND    IDIOTS, 

VIII.  Illustrative  of  Growth, 

Phrenological  Skulls, 

Nation  uncertain, 

Total, 


30 

18 

7 

2 

11 

1035 


II. 


"  Cranium,  quippe  quod  omnium  corporis  partium  nobilissimas  includit, 
indolem  ac  proprietatem  cseterorum  organorum  reprsesentare  existimatur ; 
nam  quidquid  proprii  varise  illius  partes  prje  se  ferunt,  hie  parro  spatio  con- 
junctum,  et  liniamentis,  quae  extingui  et  deleri  nunquam  possunt,  expressum 
reperitur.  IUud  adumbrationem  exhibet  imaginis,  quam  spectator  peritus 
ex  singulis  partibus  vivide  sibi  ante  oculos  fingere  potest."  —  Hueck. 

In  the  human  brain  we  find  those  characteristics  which  particu- 
larly distinguish   man  from   the  brute  creation.      The  differences 
between  the  various  races  of  men  are  fundamental  differences  in 
intellectual  capacity,  as  well   as  in   physical   conformation.      The 
brain  is  the  organ  or  physical  seat  of  the  mind,  and  variations 
in  its  development  are,  as  is  well  known,  the  constant  accompani- 
ments of  mental  inequalities.     Hence,  in  the  variations  in  size,  tex- 
ture, &c,  of  the  encephalon,  and  the  proportions  of  its  different 
parts,  we  are  necessarily  led  to  seek  in  great  measure  for  the  causes 
which  so  widely  and  constantly  dispart  the  numerous  families,  which, 
in  the  aggregate,  constitute  mankind.     In  accordance  with  its  great 
importance  and  dignity,  the  brain  has  been  carefully  deposited  in  an 
irregular  bony  case, — the  calvaria — to  which  are  attached  certain 
bony  appendages  for  the  lodgment  of  the  organs  of  the  senses,  by 
which  the  brain,  and  through  it  the  mind — the  mental  attribute 
of  the   living  principle  —  is   brought   into   relation  with   external 
nature.     Now  as  the   configuration   of  the   brain  is,   in  general, 
expressed  by  that  of  its  osseous  covering,  and  as  the  development 
of  the  facial  skeleton  affords  an  excellent  indication  of  the  size  of 
the  organs  which  it  accommodates,  it  follows  that  in  the  size  of  the 
head  and  face,  and  their  mutual  relations,  we  find  the  best  indi- 
cations of  those  mental  and  animal  differences  which,  under  all 
circumstances  and  from  ante-historic  times,  have  manifested  them- 
relves  as  the  dividing  line  between  the  Races  of  Men.     Moreover, 
if  the  construction  of  each  and  every  part  of  the  fabric  is  in  harmony 


222  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

with,  and  to  a  certain  extent  represented  in  that  of  all  other  parts,50 — 
as  the  laws  of  the  philosophico-transcendental  anatomy  seem  firmly 
to  have  established,  —  it  will  be  evident  that  the  cranium  is  the 
index,  so  to  speak,  of  the  entire  economy ;  for  the  relation  between 
the  cranium  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  face,  thorax,  and  abdominal 
organs,  respectively,  on  the  other,  or,  in  other  words,  between  the 
cerebral  or  intellectual  lobes  of  the  brain,  and  the  sensory  ganglia, 
and  nerves,  is  the  relation  of  mental  powers  to  animal  propensities, 
and  exactly  upon  this  relation  depends  the  nature  and  character  of 
the  individual  man,  and  the  family  group  to  which  he  naturally 
belongs.  Examples  of  this  fact  are  everywhere  to  be  found,  alike  in 
the  transitionary,  as  in  the  extreme  specimens  of  the  human  series. 
Thus  it  is  a  general  and  well-marked  truth,  that  in  those  inferior 
Races — the  so-called  prognathous  —  characterized  by  a  narrow  skull, 
receding  forehead,  and  enormous  anterior  development  of  the  max- 
illa, the  mental  is  in  entire  abeyance  to  the  animal ;  so  that  their 
sensuality  is  only  equalled  by  their  stupidity,  as  one  might  readily 
infer  from  the  ample  accommodations  for  the  organs  of  the  senses. 
The  pyramidal  type  is  another  inferior  form,  singularly  analogous  to 
the  prognathous  in  certain  respects,  but  differing  from  it  in  others 
hereafter  to  be  mentioned.  Races  possessing  this  form  of  cranium, 
manifest  corresponding  peculiarities  in  intellectual  power. 

Undoubtedly,  then,  the  human  cranium  recommends  itself  to  our 
earnest  attention- as  the  "best  epitome  of  man," — the  individual  in 
the  concrete ;  or,  as  Zeune  has  beautifully  expressed  it,  "  der  Bliithe 
des  ganzen  organischen  Leibes  und  Lebens ;"  and  notwithstanding 
the  adaptation  between  it  and  the  rest  of  the  skeleton  -=-  an  adapta- 
tion declaring  itself  in  relations  of  size,  function,  nutritive,  and 
developmental  processes,  &c. — we  may  study  the  cranium  by  and 
for  itself,  with  reasonable  hopes  of  success. 

As  yet,  the  labors  of  the  cranioscopist  have  given  to  anthropology 
comparatively  few  fundamental  and  well  established  facts.  Of  these, 
the  most  important,  probably,  as  well  as  the  best  substantiated,  is 
that  of  the  permanency  and  non-transmutability  of  cranial  form  and 
characteristics.  "  There  is,  on  the  whole,"  says  Lawrence,  "  an  unde- 
niable, nay,  a  very  remarkable  constancy  of  character  in  the  crania 
of  different  nations,  contributing  very  essentially  to  national  pecu- 
liarities of  form,  and  corresponding  exactly  to  the  features  which 

60  "  Tout  etre  organist  forme  un  ensemble,  un  systeme  unique  et  clos,  dont  les  parties  se 
correspondent  mutueUment,  et  concourent  a  la  meme  action  definitive  par  une  reaction 
reciproque.  Aucune  de  ces  parties  ne  peut  changer  sans  que  les  autres  ne  coangent  aussi, 
et  par  consequent  chacune  d'elles  prise  separement  indique  et  donne  toutes  les  autres." 
Cuviek.    Discours  sur  les  Revolutions  du  Globe;  ridigis  par  le  Dr.  Iloefer.  Paris,  1850,  p.  62. 


Of    THE    RACES    OF    MEN.  223 

characterize  such  nations."51  !Nor  does  this  fact  stand  alone.  It  is 
associated  with  another  which  should  never  be  lost  sight  of  in  all 
our  speculations  upon  the  unity  or  diversity,  geographical  origin  and 
distribution,  affiliation  and  antiquity  of  the  races  of  men.  I  allude 
to  that  insensible  gradation  which  appears  to  be  the  law  of  cranial 
forms,  no  less  than  of  all  the  objects  in  nature.  Erom  the  isolation 
and  exclusive  consideration  of  these  facts,  have  resulted  not  a  few 
erroneous  assertions,  which  have  tended  to  embarrass  the  science. 
Thus,  it  has  been  considered,  in  general,  a  matter  of  but  little  diffi- 
culty to  discriminate  between  the  crania  of  different  races.  But 
those  who  are  accustomed  to  this  kind  of  examination,  know  that 
this  statement  is  true  only  for  the  standard  or  typical  forms  of  very 
diverse,  races,  and  that  as  soon  as  certain  divergent  forms  of  two 
allied  races  or  families  are  compared,  the  difficulties  become  very 
apparent.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  affirmed,  that  in  any 
one  nation  it  is  easy  to  point  out  entirely  dissimilar  types  of  con- 
figuration. Thus  the  distinguished  anatomist,  Prof.  M.  J.  Weber, 
misled  apparently  by  the  restricted  and  artificial  classification  of 
Blumenbach,  arrives  at  the  general  conclusion  that  "there  is  no 
proper  mark  of  a  definite  race-form  of  the  cranium  so  firmly 
attached  that  it  may  not  be  found  in  some  other  race."52  The 
assumption  of  the  universality  of  certain  ethnical  forms,  though 
countenanced  by  more  than  one  writer,  does  not  rest  upon  sufficient 
evidence  to  warrant  its  acceptance.  Another  prevalent  but  equally 
gratuitous  notion  is,  that  the  more  ancient  the  heads,  the  more  they 
tend  to  approximate  one  primitive  form  or  type.  What  this  primi- 
tive model  is.  like,  has  not,  as  far  as  I  can  learn,  been  indicated. 

Again,  a  confusion  highly  detrimental  to  the  philosophical  status 
and  scientific  progress  of  Ethnology,  has  resulted  from  the  unjustifiable 
assumption,  that  resemblances  in  cranial  form  and  characteristics 
necessarily  betoken,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  congenital  affilia- 
tions. It  by  no  means  follows,  as  some  appear  to  have  thought,  that 
because  widely  and  persistently  discrepant  forms  are  unrelated  ab 
origine,  —  closely  coincident  forms  are  as  exact  indications  of  such 
primary  relation.  To  say  that  the  Polar  man,  —  the  Eskimo  of 
America  and  the  Samoyede  of  Asia,  —  should  in  all  natural  classifi- 
cation be  associated,  or  at  least  placed  in  juxtaposition  with  certain 
dark  races  of  the  tropics,  in  consequence  of  well-marked  cranial 
similiarities,  is  a  fact  as  singular  as  it  is  true ;  but  to  conclude  from 
these  similarities  alone,  that  they  are  affiliated  and  have  one  common 

51  Lectures,  &c,  p.  225. 

52  Crania  Britannica,  p.  4.  —  Die  Lehre  von  den  Ur-  und  Racen-Formen  der  Sch'adel  und 
Becken  des  Menschen,  S.  5,  1830. 

11 


224  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

origin,  is  at  once  illogical  and  unwarrantable.  Resemblances  in 
physical  conformation  and  in  intellectual  capacity,  manners,  and 
customs,  growing  out  of,  and  dependent  in  great  measure  upon  such 
conformation,  are  indications  rather  of  a  similarity  of  position  in 
the  great  natural  scale  of  the  human  family,  than  of  identity  of 
origin.  To  establish  identity,  proof  of  another  kind  is  required. 
That  positive  identity  of  cranial  form,  structure  and  gentilitial  cha- 
racters is  the  best  evidence  of  identity  of  origin,  or,  at  all  events,  of 
very  close  relationship,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  But  identity  must  not 
be  inferred  from  striking  similarity.  The  confusion  of  terms  has  led 
to  much  error.  Similarity  in  the  features  above  alluded  to,  indicates 
merely  an  allied  natural  position,  and  nothing  more.  This  distinc- 
tion is  as  important  in  cranioscopy  as  that  made  by  the  comparative 
anatomist  between  the  analogies  and  homologies  of  the  skeleton. 

Somebody  has  said  that  "  when  history  is  silent,  language  is  evi- 
dence." The  cranioscopist  knows  that  oftentimes,  when  both  history 
and  language  are  silent,  cranial  forms  become  evidence.  For  the 
cranial  similarities  and  differences  above  mentioned  may  be  estimated 
with  mathematical  accuracy  and  precision,  by  weight,  measurement, 
&c.  Hence,  while  the  language  of  an  ante-historic  people  may  be 
lost,  the  discovery  of  their  skulls  will  afford  us  the  means  of  deter- 
mining their  rank  or  position  in  the  human  scale,  &c.  From  consi- 
derations of  this  nature,  we  are  led  to  recognise  the  existence  of  a 
craniological  school  in  Ethnology,  a  craniological  principle  of  classi- 
fication and  research,  and  a  craniological  test  of  affinity  or  diversity. 
According  to  Prichard,  Ethnology  is,  equally  with  Geology,  a  branch 
of  Palaeontology.  "Geology,"  says  he,  "is  the  archaeology  of  the 
globe, — Ethnology  that  of  its  human  inhabitants."53  Latham,  com- 
menting upon  this  sentence,  very  appropriately  observes,  that  "when 
Ethnology  loses  its  palgeontological  character,  it  loses  half  its  scientific 
elements."54  From  this  we  learn  the  importance  of  osteology,  espe- 
cially the  cranial  department,  since  it  constitutes  one  of  the  surest, 
and  often  the  only  guide  in  identifying  ancient  populations.  Dr. 
Latham,  the  well-known  philologist,  lays  great  stress  upon  the  ethno- 
logical value  of  language,  which  he  speaks  of  as  "  yielding  in  defi- 
nitude  to  no  characteristic  whatever."  ....  "Whatever  maybe 
said  against  certain  over-statements  as  to  constancy,  it  is  an  undoubted 
fact,  that  identity  of  language  is  primd  facie  evidence  of  identity  of 
origin."55  Among  the  apophthegms  appended  to  his  work  on  the 
Varieties  of  Man,  the  same  opinion  occurs. — "  In  the  way  of  physical 

53  Anniversary  Address,  delivered  before  the  Ethnological  Society  of  London,  in  1847. 
5*  Man  and  his  Migrations,  Amer.  Edit.     New  York,  1852,  p.  41. 
55  Ibid,  p.  35. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  225 

characteristics,  common  conditions  develop  common  points  of  con- 
formation. Hence,  as  elements  of  classification,  physical  characters 
are  of  less  value  than  the  philological  moral  ones."56  There  are 
reasons  for  dissenting  from  the  opinion  of  this  eminent  philologist. 
"When  we  contemplate  the  mutability  and  destructibility  of  languages, 
as  abundantly  exemplified  in  the  obliteration  of  the  Etruscan  dialect 
by  the  Roman-Latin ;  the  Celtiberian  and  Turdetan  by  the  Latin  and 
Spanish ;  the  Syriac  by  Arabic ;  Celtic  by  the  Latin  and  French ; 
the  Celtic  of  Britain  by  the  Saxon  and  English ;  the  Pelhevi  and  Zend 
by  the  Persian,  and  the  Mauri tanian  by  Arabic;57  when  we  reflect 
how  the  Epirotes  and  Siculi  changed  their  language,  without  con- 
quest or  colonization,  into  Creek,  and  how  the  ancient  Pelasgi,  all 
the  primitive  inhabitants  of  the  Peloponnessus,  and  many  of  those 
of  Arcadia  and  Attica,  abandoned  their  own  language  and  adopted 
that  of  the  Hellenes ; M  when  we  behold  the  Negroes  of  St.  Domingo 
speaking  the  French  tongue,  the  Bashkirs,  of  Finnish  origin,  speak- 
ing Turkish ; 59  and  when,  finally,  as  one  instance  of  another  and 
significant  class  of  facts,  we  call  to  mind  how  the  Carelians,  in  con- 
sequence of  certain  linguistic  analogies,  have  been  classed  with  the 
Finns,  though  descended  from  an  entirely  different  race,  who,  at  an 
early  period,  overran  the  region  about  Lake  Ladoga,60  —  we  are 
"disposed  to  believe  with  Humboldt"  —  I  am  using  the  words  of 
Morton  —  "  that  we  shall  never  be  able  to  trace  the  affiliation  of 
nations  by  a  mere  comparison  of  languages ;  for  this,  after  all,  is  but 
one  of  many  clews  by  which  that  great  problem  is  to  be  solved."61 
Surely  anatomy  aud  physiology  —  those  handmaids  of  the  zoologist 
— are  more  powerful,  and,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  better  adapted 
to  settle  the  question  of  the  unity  of  man,  to  determine  whether  the 
human  family  is  composed  of  several  species,  or  of  but  one  species 
comprising  many  varieties.  Surely  the  human  skeleton  is  more  en- 
during and  less  mutable  than  the  oldest  laneuao-e.  Instances  are 
not  wanting,  as  we  have  seen  above,  of  a  nation  forgetting  its  own 
language  in  its  admiration  for  the  more  perfect  speech  of  another 
people.  But,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  not  a  solitary  instance  can  be 
adduced  of  a  nation,  genealogically  pure,  entirely  changing  its  physical 
characters  for  those  of  another.  Let  us  conclude  then,  with  Bodi- 
chon,  that  Physiology  is  superior  to  Philology  as  an  instrument  of 
ethnological  research. — "  To  throw  light  upon  the  question  of  origins, 
it  is  necessary  to  appeal  to  a  science  more  precise,  and  founded  on 

56  Varieties  of  Man,  p.  562.  5'  Hamilton  Smith,  op.  cit.,  p.  178. 

58  Nicbuhr,  Hist,  of  Rome,  1,  37. 

59  Helwerzen,  Annuaire  des  Mines  de  Russie,  1840,  p.  84. 

6°  Haartman,  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Stockholm,  for  1847. 
61  Crania  Americana,  p.  18. 

15 


226  THE     CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

the  nature  of  the  object  which  we  examine.  This  science  is  the  Phy- 
siology of  races,  or,  in  other  words,  a  knowledge  of  their  moral  and 
physical  characters.  Through  Physiology  has  been  established  the 
existence  of  antediluvian  beings,  their  genera,  their  species,  and 
their  varieties ;  by  it  also  we  shall  discover  the  origin  of  races  of 
men,  even  the  most  mysterious.  Through  it  we  shall  one  day  be 
able  to  classify  populations  as  surely  as  we  now  class  animals  and 
plants :  history,  philology,  annals,  inscriptions,  the  monuments  of 
arts  and  of  religion,  will  be  auxiliaries  in  these  researches.  Herein 
we  consider  its  indications  as  motives  of  certitude,  and  its  decisions 
as  a  criterion."62 

Anthropology  has  been  involved  in  not  a  little  confusion  by  certain 
injudicious  departures  from  the  well-tried  zoological  methods  em- 
ployed by  naturalists  generally.  But  little  difficulty  seems  to  be 
experienced  in  the  practical  determination  of  species  in  the  animal 
and  vegetable  worlds ;  but  as  soon  as  the  rules  and  specific  distinc- 
tions here  employed  have  been  applied  to  man,  exceptions  have 
been  taken  at  once,  and  attempts  made  to  invalidate  their  appli- 
cability, by  excluding  man  entirely  from  the  pale  of  the  animal 
kingdom,  as  if,  in  the  latter,  development,  formation  and  deformation 
were  controlled  by  laws  different  from  these  processes  in  the  former. 
Barbancois  regards  man  as  "  un  type  tout  a  part  dans  la  creation, 
comme-le  representant  d'un  regne  particulier  —  le  regne  moral."  So 
the  celebrated  Marcel  de  Serres  says,  "  l'homme  ne  constitue  dans  la 
nature  ni  une  espece,  ni  un  genre,  ni  un  ordre,  il  est  a  mi  seul  un 
regne,  le  rSgne  humain."13  Aristotle,  the  father  of  philosophical 
natural  history,  Pay,  Brisson,  Pennant,  Vic  dAzyr,  Baubenton, 
Tiedemann,  and  others  equally  distinguished,  have  all  unwisely  at- 
tempted this  disruption  of  nature.  The  futility  of  the  arguments 
employed  may  be  learned  by  reference  to  Swainson's  Nat.  Hist,  and 
Classification  of  Quadrupeds.61  But  those  who  recognize  the  ani- 
mality  of  man,  and  place  him  accordingly  at  the  head  of  the  Mam- 
malia, are  not  exactly  agreed  as  to  the  extent  of  isolation  which 
should  be  claimed  for  him  in  this  position,  or,  in  other  words,  differ- 
ence of  opinion  exists  as  to  the  extent  and  scientific  meaning  of  the 
gap  which  separates  him  from  the  highest  brute.  Linnaeus  grouped 
Man,  the  SimiEe  and  Bats  under  the  general  division,  Primates.65 
niiger,66  Cuvier,67  Lawrence,68  and  others,  assign  him  a  distinct  order. 

62  Etudes  sur  PAlge'rie,  Alger,  p.  18. 

63  Voyage  au  Pole  Sud.  Anthropologic,  de  Dumoutier,  par  Blanchard.    Paris,  1854,  p.  18. 
e*Pp  8-10 

65  He  observes,  "  Nullum  characterem  hactenus  eruere  potui,  unde  Homo  a  Simia  inter- 
noscatur."  —  Fauna  Suecica.     Preface,  p.  ii. 

66  Prodomus  Systematis  Mammalium.  67  Regne  Animal.  68  Op.  cit. 


OF     THE    RACES    OF    MEN.  227 

Van  Ameinge  considers  Man  the  sole  representative  of  a  distinct  and 
separate  mammalian  class,  to  which,  he  applies  the  term  Psychical 
or  Spiritual,  in  contradistinction  to  the  Instinctive  mammals.69  As 
might  be  naturally  expected  frorii  the  above  remarks,  still  less  agree- 
ment is  manifested  in  relation  to  the  classification  of  the  different 
races  or  tribes  of  men.  This  want  of  accordance  arises  from  the 
difficulty  of  determining  what  characters  are  fundamental  and  typical, 
and  what  are  not. 

Now,  it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  an  ethnical,  like  any  other 
natural  type,  is  an  ideal  creation,  not  a  positive  entity.  It  is  analo- 
gous to  the  mean  or  average  of  a  series  of  numbers.  These  numbers 
may  all  be  but  slightly  different  from  each  other,  and  yet  none  of 
them  be  exactly  identical  with  the  mean.  In  examining  a  number 
of  objects  presenting  many  peculiarities,  the  mind  instinctively 
figures  to  itself  an  object  possessing  all  these  peculiarities.  This 
object,  this  ideal  image,  gradually  assumes  the  dignity  and  import- 
ance of  a  standard  to  which  all  other  similar  objects  are  referred,  as 
greater  or  less  approximations  to  the  type,  the  approximation  being 
dependent  upon  the  degree  of  predominance  of  the  peculiarities  in 
question.     If,  on  comparing  any  body  with  this  imaginary  standard 

—  "this  form  which  exists  everywhere,  and  is  nowhere  to  be  found" 

—  the  points  of  resemblance  are  in  number  equal  to  or  even  less 
than  the  points  of  difference,  then  it  is  said  to  diverge  from  the  type. 
It  is  a  divergent  form.  IS  aw,  a  type  as  it  is  manifested  in  nature  is, 
for  all  practical  purposes,  fixed  and  immutable;  our  mental  con- 
ception of  it  is  necessarily  a  constantly  varying  one.  The  more 
numerous  the  individuals  of  the  group,  and  the  more  extensive  our 
examination,  the  more  perfect  will  be  our  generalization,  upon 
which,  in  fact,  the  type  is  based.  The  examination  of  but  a  few 
individuals  of  a  group  is  apt  to  lead  to  an  erroneous  idea  of  the  type. 

But  a  singular  fact  here  claims  our  attention.  Along  with  this 
increasing  perfection  of  the  typical  idea  comes  a  diminished  confi- 
dence in  its  importance ;  for  the  same  observations  which  serve  to 
establish  the  type,  also  lead  us  to  perceive  that  the  distance  which 
separates  one  type  from  another  is  a  plenum,  and  is  not  marked  by 
gaps,  but  by  transitionary  forms  —  not  transitionary  in  the  sense  of 
variations  from  certain  persistent  forms  brought  about  by  climatic 
conditions,  &c,  but  transitionary  forms  ah  origine  and  self-existent, 
presenting  themselves  unchanged  as  they  were  characterized  by  the 
Great  First  Cause,  and  inherently  capable  of  those  known  and 
limited  variations  produced  by  intermarriage,   &c.     The  elements 

e»  An  Investigation  of  the  Theories  of  the  Nat.  History  of  Man,  &c.  New  York,  1848, 
p.  72. 


228  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

which  establish  a  type  serve  to  connect  it  insensibly  with  those  of 
another.  Hence  the  great  difficulty  experienced  in  attempting  to 
classify  the  members  of  the  Human  Family.  The  discrepancy  of 
opinion  has  extended  not  only  to  the  number  of  divisions  to  be 
made,  but  also  to  the  particular  races  which  should  be  assigned  to 
each  division.  Blumenbach  long  ago  expressed  this  difficulty.  We 
have  only  to  examine  the  list  of  writers  who  have  attempted  the 
classification  of  Human  Races,  and  observe  how  they  differ  in  the 
number  of  their  primary  departments,  to  be  convinced  of  the  pre- 
matureness  of  the  whole  attempt,  and  the  scanty  scientific  data  upon 
which  such  very  artificial  divisions  have  been  erected.  It  appears  to 
me  that  much  of  the  difficulty  arises  from  the  scanty  information 
which  we  possess  concerning  the  number  of  primaeval  cranial  types, 
the  number  of  naturally  divergent  forms  of  each  of  these,  and  the 
degree  of  divergency  permitted,  and  lastly,  the  tests  by  which  to 
discriminate  between  forms  naturally  aberrant,  and  those  hybrid 
results  of  blood-crossing.  The  study  of  divergent  forms  is  of  great 
importance,  since  in  their  varied  but  limited  deviations  from  the 
type  —  like  all  exceptions  to  general  rules — -they  indicate  the 
essentials  of  the  type  while  demonstrating  a  serial,  archetypal  unity 
of  the  human  family  in  keeping  with  the  entire  animal  world.  To 
speak,  therefore,  of  "  developing  the  limits  of  a  variety,"  is  simply 
to  demonstrate  the  connections,  relations,  and  persistence  of  those 
varieties.  The  diversities  of  cranial  form  presented  by  any  nation 
or  tribe  should  therefore  be  regarded  as  the  radii,  so  to  speak,  by 
which  that  tribe  is  connected  with  the  rest  of  the  humanitarian 
series,  whether  living  or  extinct,  or,  in  the  course  of  future  geolo- 
gical changes,  yet  to  appear. 

It  is  well  known  that  naturalists  rely  mainly  upon  form,  color, 
proportions  —  the  externals,  in  short. — to  establish  species.  The 
illustrious  Cuvier,  taking  higher  ground,  attempted  to  develope  the 
laws  of  classification  by  a  resort  to  the  comparative  method  in  ana- 
tomy. With  the  osteological  branch  of  this  method,  as  an  instru- 
ment of  research,  he  undertook  his  grand  scheme  of  the  restoration 
of  the  fossil  world  and  the  determination  of  its  relation  to  the  living 
zoology.  His  reliance  upon  internal  structure  in  preference  to 
external  characters,  was  as  much  a  matter  of  necessity  as  of  choice, 
since  of  the  palseontological  objects  of  his  study,  the  bony  skeleton 
and  the  teeth  alone  remained  from  which  to  recompose  the  forms 
of  the  past  animal  world,  and  determine  their  species.  In  the  course 
of  his  investigations  a  remarkable  fact  became  evident  —  that  in 
many  genera  of  animals,  species  externally  well  chai'acterized,  dif- 
fered scarcely  at  all  in  their  bony  frame-work.     Regarding  these 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  229 

slight  differences  —  by  such  a  practised  eye  certainly  not  over- 
looked—  as  trivial,  and  losing  sight  of  the  singular  importance 
they  derive  from  their  historical  permanency,  he  was  led  in  the  end 
to  deny  to  comparative  osteology  the  value  he  first  assigned  it. 
Thus,  notwithstanding  his  great  scientific  labors,  he  left  it  unde- 
cided whether  the  fossil  horse  was  specifically  identical  with  the 
living  or  not.70  On  this  point  naturalists  still  differ  in  opinion. 
Whilst  by  the  aid  of  comparative  anatomy  — for  the  cultivation 
of  which  he  enjoyed  unusual  advantages  —  he  was  enabled  to  startle 
the  world  with  the  brilliant  announcement  that  there  had  been 
several  zoological  creations,  of  which  man  was  one,  we  find  him  at 
length  hesitatingly  denying  to  anatomical  characters  the  power  of 
determining  species.  But  the  question  arises  —  a  question  already 
perceived  and  disposed  of  in  the  affirmative  by  some  ethnologists  — 
whether  anatomical  characters  have  not  a  higher  signification  than 
the  mere  determination  of  species ;  whether,  in  fact,  they  are  not 
generic.  It  would,  indeed,  appear,  that  while  the  external  or  peri- 
pheral form  and  appendages  determine  species,  the  internal  organism 
establishes  genera.  But  the  genus  must  contain  within  itself  and 
foreshadow  the  essential  characters  of  the  species ;  there  must  be  an 
adaptation  between  the  peripheral  conformation  and  central  organic 
structure.  As  a  very  slight  error  committed  in  the  first  step  of  a 
long  and  complicated  mathematical  calculation  magnifies  itself  at 
every  subsequent  step  of  the  process,  until  a  result  is  obtained  very 
different  from  the  true  one,  so  a  comparatively  minute  peculiarity  in 
the  osseous  structure  of  an  animal  may  repeat  itself  through  the 
muscles,  fascia,  and  integumentary  covering,  expressing  itself  at  last 
as  a  characteristic,  which,  though  it  might  be  difficult  to  point  out 
exactly,  is  seen  to  be  an  individual  or  specific  mark  by  which 
the  animal  may  be  discriminated  from  other  individuals  or  from 
allied  species.  And  as  the  result  of  the  supposed  problem  must 
always  be  the  same,  so  long  as  the  incorporated  error  is  not  elimi- 
nated, so  the  external  peculiarity  of  the  animal  must  ever  remain  the 
same,  while  the  internal  structure  mark  varies  not.  This  constant 
and  historically  immutable  relation  between  structure  and  form  is  in 
consonance  with  the  law  of  the  "correlation  of  forms,"  first  sug- 
gested, I  believe,  by  Cuvier,  and  by  him  used  in  such  a  masterly 
manner  in  the  elucidation  of  the  laws  of  zoology. 

"The  importance  to  be  attached  to  the  zoological  characters 
afforded  by  the  slighter  modifications  of  structure,"  writes  Martin, 
"  rises  as  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of  being.     In  the  arrangement  of 


™  Diseours  sur  les  Revolutions  du  Globe,  p.  76. 


230  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

mammalia  and  birds,  for  example,  minutiae  which,  among  the  Inverte- 
brata,  would  be  deemed  of  little  note,  become  of  decided  value,  and 
are  no  longer  to  be  neglected.  Even  the  modifications,  however 
slight,  of  a  common  type,  now  become  stamped  with  a  value,  the 
ratio  of  which  increases  as  we  advance  from  the  lower  to  the  higher 
orders.  Hence,  with  respect  to  mammalia,  the  highest  class  of 
Vertebrata,  every  structural  phase  claims  attention ;  and,  when  we 
advance  to  the  highest  of  the  highest  class,  viz.,  Man,  and  the  Quad- 
rumana,  the  naturalist  lays  a  greater  stress  on  minute  grades  and 
modifications  of  form,  than  he  does  when  among  the  cetacea  or  the 
marsupials ;  and  hence,  groups  are  separated  upon  characters  thus 
derived,  because  they  involve  marked  differences  in  the  animal 
economy,  and  because  it  is  felt  that  a  modification,  in  itself  of  no 
great  extent,  leads  to  most  important  results.  Carrying  out  the 
principle  of  an  increase  in  the  value  of  differential  characters  as  we 
advance  in  the  scale  of  being,  it  may  be  affirmed  that,  upon  legiti- 
mate zoological  grounds,  the  organic  conformation  of  man,  modelled, 
possibly,  upon  the  same  type  as  that  of  the  chimpanzee  or  orang, 
but  modified,  with  a  view  to  fit  him  for  the  habits,  manners,  and, 
indeed,  a  totality  of  active  existence,  indicative  of  a  destiny  and 
purposes  participated  in  neither  by  the  chimpanzee  nor  any  other 
animal,  removes  Man  from  the  Quadrumana,  not  merely  in  a  generic 
point  of  view,  but  from  the  pale  of  the  Primates,  to  an  exclusive 
situation.  The  zoological  value  of  characters  derived  from  struc- 
tural modifications  is  commensurate  with  the  results  which  they 
involve ;  let  it  then  be  shown  that  man,  though  a  cheiropod  (hand- 
footed),  possesses  structural  modifications  leading  to  most  important 
results,  and  our  views  are  at  once  justified."71 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  anatomical  differences  are  valuable  to  the 
zoologist  more  from  their  permanency,  than  from  their  magnitude. 
"A  species,"  says  Prof.  Leidy,  "is  a  mere  convenient  word  with 
which  naturalists  empirically  designate  groups  of  organized  beings 
possessing  characters  of  comparative  constancy,  as  far  as  historic 
experience  has  guided  them  in  giving  due  weight  to  such  con- 
stancy."72 An  organic  form  historically  constant  is,  therefore,  a 
simple  and  exact  expression  of  a  species.  In  this  constancy  of  a 
form  lies  its  typical  importance  as  a  standard  or  point  of  departure 

71  A  General  Introduction  to  the  Natural  History  of  Mammiferous  Animals,  with  a  parti- 
cular -view  of  the  Physical  History  of  Man,  &c.  By  W.  C.  S.  Martin,  F.  L.  S.  London, 
1841,  p.  200. 

?2  Proceedings  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences,  Vol.  VII.  p.  201.  —  See  also  a  letter 
from  Prof.  L.  to  Dr.  Nott,  of  Mobile,  published  in  the  Appendix  to  Hotz's  translation  of 
Gobineau's  work  on  the  Inequality  of  Races,  &c,  p.  480. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  231 

in  all  our  attempts  at  classification  and  developing  the  laws  of  forma- 
tion.    Tlie  mere  shape,  volume,  or  configuration,  is  secondary. 

The  polar,  brown,  and  grizzly  bears  differ  but  little  in  their  oste- 
ology ;  the  same  is  true  of  the  horse,  ass,  and  zebra,  and  of  the  lion, 
tiger,  and  panther.  By  most  naturalists  the  horse  and  ass  are  referred 
to  distinct  species, — by  Prof.  Owen  to  distinct  genera.  The  latter 
gentleman  specifically  separates  a  fossil  from  the  recent  horse,  in 
consequence  of  a  slight  curvature  in  the  teeth  of  the  former.  Accord- 
ing to  Flourens,  the  dog  and  fox  belong  to  different  genera ;  the  dog 
and  wolf  to  distinct  species,  as  also  the  lion  and  tiger.73  Now  the 
crania  of  the  horse  and  ass  differ  in  their  nasal  bones  only.  The 
pupil  of  the  dog  is  disc-shaped ;  that  of  the  fox,  elongated.  Says 
Knox :  "  The  nasal  bones  of  the  ass  differ  constantly  from  those  of 
the  horse ;  so  do  those  of  the  lion  and  tiger.  The  distinction  extends 
to  the  whole  physiognomical  character  of  the  crania  in  these  four 
species,  and  in  all  others.  But  so  it  is  in  man,  chiefly  in  these  very 
bones,  and  in  the  physiognomy  of  the  skeleton  of  the  face.  For  it 
is  not  in  the  comparative  length  or  size  merely  of  the  nasal  or  maxil- 
lary bones  that  the  cranium  of  the  Bosjieman  and  the  Australian 
differ  from  the  other  races  of  men,  although  these  differences  are  no 
doubt  as  constant  and  real  as  are  the  anatomical  differences  of  any 
two  species ;  they  differ  in  every  respect,  and  especially  do  they  dis- 
play physiognomical  distinction,  which  the  experienced  eye  detects 
at  once.  When  fossil  man  shall  be  discovered,  he,  also,  will  be 
proved  to  have  belonged  to  a  species  distinct  from  any  that  now 
live.  By  the  generic  law  I  am  about  to  establish,  his  affiliation  with 
the  existing  races  may  and  will  be  proved,  first  by  the  fact  of  his 
extinction,  but  still  more  by  those  slight  anatomical  differences, 
which,  though  seemingly  unimportant,  are  not  really  so.  His  rela- 
tion to  the  present  or  living  world  will  be  the  same  as  that  of  the 
extinct  solid-ungular  and  earnivora  to  the  living — generically  identi- 
cal, specifically  distinct." 74 

Between  the  crania  of  the  various  races  of  men,  the  same  slight, 
but  constant,  and  therefore  important,  differences  can  be  pointed  out, 
in  some  instances  even  more  marked  and  better  characterized  than 
those  which  are  considered  by  naturalists  of  high  distinction,  as  suffi- 
cient to  form  a  basis  upon  which  to  establish  species.  It  is  true  that 
no  human  race  possesses  a  bone  the  more  or  less  in  the  cranium,  than 
the  others ;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  human  crania  differ,  in  some 
instances  quite  remarkably,  in  the  size  and  proportions  of  their  con- 
's Op.  cit.,  p.  111. 

"  Introduction  to  Inquiries  into  the  Philosophy  of  Zoology,  by  Kobt.  Knox,  M.D.,  &c, 
in  London  Lancet,  Oct.,  1855. 


232  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

stitnent  bones,  and  these  differences  are  not  accidental  and  fluctua- 
ting, but  persistent.  Thus,  the  massive,  broad,  and  outward-shelving 
malar  bones  of  the  Polar  man  are  unlike  those  of  any  other  race. 
So,  the  superior  maxillae  of  the  Coast  African  is  so  unlike  that  of 
any  other  people,  as  to  have  become  a  standard  of  comparison  for 
inferiority — a  standard  expressed  by  the  word  prognathous.  Differ- 
ences in  the  nasal  bones,  in  the  size  ol  the  frontal  sinuses,  in  the 
prominence  of  the  occiput,  in  the  angle  at  which  the  parietal  bones 
join  each  other,  in  the  form  and  arrangement  of  the  teeth,  in  the 
relation  of  head  to  face,  in  the  relative  situations  of  the  great  occi- 
pital foramen  and  the  bony  meatus,  in  the  form  of  the  skull,  and  the 
configuration  of  its  base ;  and,  as  the  result  of  all  these,  in  the  physi- 
ognomy of  the  facial  bones,  exist,  as  I  shall  presently  endeavor  to 
show,  and  are  perpetuated  from  one  generation  to  another  as  con- 
stant and  unaltered  features. 

Cranial  differentise,  however  slight,  derive  additional  importance 
from  their  .relation  to  the  physiognomical  character  of  the  skull  as 
a  whole,  and  daily  observation  shows  this  character  to  be  more  im- 
portant than  is  generally  considered.  The  labors  of  Porta,  Camper, 
Lebrun,  Lavater,  Bichat,  Moreau  de  la  Sarthe,  and  others,  have  given 
us  the  scientific  elements  of  a  physiognomy  or  physiology  of  the  face, 
as  those  of  Blumenbach  and  Morton  have  established  a  physiology 
of  the  cranium.  Between  the  muscular  and  integumentary  investi- 
titure  of  the  face  and  head  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  bony  structure 
of  these  parts  on  the  other,  there  is  a  decided  adaptation.  Whether 
the  soft  parts  determine  the  form  of  the  osseous  frame-work,  or  the 
latter  that  of  the  former,  does  not  so  much  concern  us,  at  present,  as 
the  fact  of  adaptation.  That  this  adaptation  exists,  there  can  scarcely 
be  a  doubt.  "  Tout  dans  la  nature,"  beautifully  and  truthfully  writes 
De  la  Sarthe,  "  est  rapport  et  harmonie ;  chaque  apparence  externe 
est  le  signe  d'une  propriety :  chaque  point  de  la  superficie  d'un  corps 
annonce  l'etat  de  sa  profondeur  et  de  sa  structure."75  In  virtue  of 
this  harmony,  we  find  the  physiognomy  of  the  skull  expressing  the 
true  value  of  its  osteologic  peculiarities,  even  when  these  are  so 
slight  as  to  appear  in  themselves  trivial  and  insignificant.  Soemmer- 
ing, not  perceiving  the  import  of  this  relation,  tells  us  that  he  could 
find  no  well-marked  differences  between  the  German,  Swiss,  French, 
Swedish  and  Russian  skulls  in  his  collection,  leaving  it  to  be  inferred 
that  none  such  existed.76    At  a  later  period,  and  from  the  same 

'5  Neuvieme  Etude  sur  Lavater. 

76  Lawrence  informs  us  that  his  friend,  Mr.  Geo.  Lewis,  in  a  tour  through  France  and 
Germany,  observed  that  the  lower  and  anterior  part  of  the  cranium  is  larger  in  the  French, 
the  upper  and  anterior  in  the  Germans;  and  that  the  upper  and  posterior  region  is  larger 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  233 

cause,  Cuvier,  while  conducting  his  palasontological  researches,  more 
than  once  fell  into  an  analogous  error. 

From  the  foregoing  remarks,  it  will  be  seen  that  it  is  a  matter  of 
mucin  importance  to  be  able  to  discriminate  between  typical  or  race- 
forms  of  crania,  and  those  modifications  of  shape  produced,  to  a 
certain  extent,  by  age,  sex,  development,  intermixture  of  races,  arti- 
ficial deformations,  &c.  Unless  these  distinctions  be  observed,  and 
due  allowance  made  for  them,  it  will  be  utterly  impossible  to  deter- 
mine the  number  and  character  of  the  primitive  types  —  an  attempt 
already  almost  hopelessly  beyond  our  power,  in  consequence  of  the 
ceaseless  migrations  and  affiliations  which  have  been  going  on 
amongst  the  races  of  men  since  the  remotest  antiquity.  The  modi- 
fications of  cranial  form,  from  these  various  causes,  are  so  many 
associated  elements,  which  must  be  individually  isolated  before  we 
can  determine  the  true  value  of  each.  In  proportion  as  this  isolation 
is  complete,  so  will  our  results  approximate  the  truth. 

It  is  very  well  known  that  the  skulls  of  the  lower  animals  undergo 
certain  changes  in  conformation  as  they  advance  in  age.  In  a  limited 
degree,  this  appears  to  be  true  of  man  also ;  though  the  extent  of 
these  changes,  and  the  period  at  which  they  are  most  noticeable  — 
whether  during  intra-uterine  life,  or  subsequent  to  birth — are  points 
not  yet  definitively  settled.  However,  from  the  observations  of 
Soemmering,  Camper,  Blumenbach,  Loder  and  Ludwig,  we  learn 
that  in  very  young  children,  even  in  infants  at  the  moment  of  birth, 
the  race-lineaments  are  generally  but  positively  expressed.  Blumen- 
bach, in  his  Decades,  figures  the  head  of  a  Jewess,  aged  five  years, 
a  Burat  child,  one  and  a  half  years,  and  a  newly-born  negro ;  in 
each  of  these  the  ethnic  characters  of  the  race  to  which  it  belongs 
are  distinctly  seen.  The  Mortonian  collection  furnishes  a  number 
of  examples  confirmatory  of  this  interesting  and  remarkable  fact. 

Occasionally  the  tardy  development  of  certain  parts  may  give  rise 
to  apparent  modifications,  as  indicated  in  the  following  passage  from 
Dr.  Gosse's  highly  interesting  essay  upon  the  artificial  deformations 
of  the  skull.  "II  n'est  pas  meme  rare,  en  Europe,  de  voir  le  front 
paraitre  plus  saillant  chez  un  grand  nombre  d'enfants,  en  raison  du 
faible  developpement  de  la  face.  Toutefois,  jusqu'a,  l'age  de  dix  a 
douze  ans,  il  existe  en  general  une  predominance  de  la  region  occipi- 
tale  qui  parait  se  developper  d'autant  plus  que  l'intelligence  est  plus 
exercee.     Ce  n'est  souvent  que  vers  cette  epoque  de  la  vie  que  les  os 

in  the  former  than  in  the  latter.  (Op.  cit,  p.  239.) — Count  Gobineau,  in  his  work  already 
alluded  to,  speaks  of  a  certain  enlargement  on  each  side  of  the  lower  lip,  which  is  found 
among  the  English  and  Germans. 


234  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

propres  du  nez  tendent  a  se  relever  davantage  suivant  les  traits  des 
individus  ou  des  races."77 

Some  physiologists  have  supposed  that  permanent  modifications 
of  cranial  form  are  produced  during  severe  and  protracted  accouche- 
ments.  Gall,  long  ago,  refuted  this  notion,  and  every  accoucheur  has, 
in  fact,  constant  opportunities  of  satisfying  himself  of  the  untena- 
bility  of  this  doctrine.  It  has  more  than  once  happened  to  me,  as  it 
necessarily  does  to  every  physician  engaged  in  the  practice  of  ob- 
stetrics, to  witness  a  head,  long  compressed  in  a  narrow  pelvis,  born 
with  the  nose  greatly  depressed,  the  forebead  flattened,  the  parietal 
bones  overriding  each  other,  and  the  whole  skull  completely  wire- 
drawn, so  as  to  resemble  some  of  the  permanent  deformations  pic- 
tured in  the  books ;  and  yet,  in  a  few  days,  the  inherent  elasticity  of 
the  bony  case  and  its  contained  parts  has  sufficed  to  restore  it  to  its 
natural  form.  But  the  great  objection  to  this  opinion  lies  in  the  fact 
of  a  conformity  between  the  cranial  and  pelvic  types  of  a  particular 
race.  Dr.  Vrolick,  following  up  the  suggestions  of  Camper  and  some 
other  observers,  relative  to  certain  peculiarities  of  the  negro  pelvis, 
has  demonstrated  the  existence  of  a  race-form  for  the  pelvis  as  for 
the  cranium.  He  has  shown  that  the  form  of  the  head  is  adapted  to 
the  pelvic  passage  which  it  is  compelled  to  traverse  in  the  parturient 
act,  and  that  the  pelvis,  like  the  skull,  possesses  its  race-characters 
and  sexual  distinctions,  sufficiently  well  marked,  even  at  the  infantile 
epoch.  As  in  the  zoological  series,  we  find  the  cranium  of  the  mon- 
key differing  from  that  of  the  animals  below  it,  and  approximating 
the  human  type,  so  we  find  the  pelvis  pursuing  the  same  gradation, 
from  the  Orang  to  the  Bosjieman,  from  the  Bosjieman  to  the  Ethio- 
pian, from  the  Ethiopian  to  the  Malay,  and  so  on  to  the  high  caste 
"White  races,  where  it  attains  its  perfection,  and  is  the  farthest  removed 
in  form  from  that  of  the  other  mammiferse.  I  am  aware  that  Weber 
has  attempted  to  deny  the  value  of  these  observations,  by  showing 
that,  although  certain  pelvic  forms  occur  more  frequently  in  some 
races  than  in  others,  yet  exceptions  were  found  in  the  fact  of  the 
European  conformation  being  occasionally  encountered  among  other 
and  very  different  races.  "  This  is  not  proving  much,"  as  Be  Gobi- 
neau  acutely  observes,  "  inasmuch  as  M.  "Weber,  in  speaking  of 
these  exceptions,  appears  never  to  have  entertained  tbe  idea,  that 
their  peculiar  conformation  could  only  be  the  result  of  a  mixture  of 
blood."78 

"  Essai  stir  les  Deformations  Artificielles  du  Crane,  Par  L.  A.  Gosse,  de  Geneve,  &c. 
Paris,  1855.  Published  originally  as  a  contribution  to  the  "Annales  d'  Hygiene  Publique  et  de 
Medecine  Legale,"  2e  seric,  1855,  tomes  III.  et  IV. 

>»  Op.  cit.,  t.  1,  p.  193. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  285 

In  the  study  of  cranial  forms,  sexual  differences  should  not  be 
overlooked.  "The  female  skull,"  says  Davis,  "except  in  races 
equally  distinguished  by  forms  strikingly  impressed,  does  not  exhibit 
the  gentilitial  characters  eminently."79  It  is  well  known  to  the  ob- 
stetrician, that  the  male  skull,  at  birth,  is,  on  the  average,  larger  than 
the  female. 

A  complete  history  of  the  development  of  the  human  brain  and 
cranium,  in  the  different  races,  would  constitute  one  of  the  most 
valuable  contributions  to  anthropology.  Such  a  history  alone  can 
determine  the  true  meaning  of  the  various  appearances  which  these 
parts  assume  in  their  transition  from  the  ovum  to  the  fully-developed 
typical  character,  and  demonstrate  their  as  yet  mysterious  relations 
to  the  innumerable  forms  of  life  which  are  scattered  over  the  surface 
of  the  globe.  To  such  a  history  must  we  look,  also,  for  a  solution 
of  the  question,  as  to  whether  the  soft  and  pulpy  brain  models  around 
itself  its  hard  and  resisting  bony  case,  or,  conversely,  whether  this 
latter  gives  shape  to  the  former. 

During  the  first  six  weeks  of  embryonic  life,  the  brain,  clothed  in 
its  different  envelopes,  exists  without  any  bony  investment,  being 
surrounded  externally  with  an  extremely  thin,  soft.,  and  pliable  carti- 
laginous membrane,  in  which  ossification  subsequently  takes  place. 
About  the  eighth  week,  as  shown  by  the  investigations  of  Gall,  the 
ossific  points  appear  in  this  membrane,  sending  out  diverging  radii 
in  every  direction.  As  this  delicate  cartilaginous  layer  is  moulded 
nicely  over  the  brain,  the  minute  specks  of  calcareous  matter,  as  they 
are  deposited,  must  to  some  extent  acquire  the  same  form  as  the  brain. 
Whether  this  be  true  or  not,  there  is  a  manifest  adaptation  between 
the  brain  and  cranium,  the  result  of  a  harmony  in  growth,  inseparably 
connected  with  the  action  of  one  developing  principle  in  the  human 
economy.  From  this  fact,  alone,  we  might  fairly  infer  that  differences 
in  the  volume  and  configuration  of  a  number  of  crania  are  general 
indications  of  differences  in  the  volume  and  configuration  of  their 
contained  brains.  One  single  fact,  among  many  others,  proves  this 
admirable  harmony.  It  is  this :  The  process  of  ossification  is  at  first 
most  rapid  in  the  bones  composing  the  vault ;  but  presently  ceasing 
here,  it  advances  so  rapidly  in  those  of  the  base  and  inferior  parts 
generally,  that  at  birth  the  base  is  solid  and  incompressible,  thus 
protecting  from  pressure  the  nervous  centre  of  respiration,  which  is 
at  this  time  firriier  and  better  developed  than  the  softer  and  less 
voluminous  cerebral  lobes. 

According  to  the  embryologic  investigations  of  M.  de  Serres,  of 
all  brains,  that  of  the  high-caste  European  is  the  most  complex  in 

?9  Op.  cit.,  p.  5. 


236  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

its  organization.  In  attaining  this  high  development,  it  passes  suc- 
cessively through  the  forms  which  belong  permanently  to  fishes,  rep- 
tiles, birds,  mammals,  Negroes,  Malays,  Americans,  and  Mongolians. 

The  bony  structure  undergoes  similar  alterations.  "One  of  the  earliest  points  where 
ossification  commences  is  the  lower  jaw.  This  bone  is  therefore  sooner  completed  than 
any  other  of  the  head,  and  acquires  a  predominance  which  it  never  loses  in  the  Negro. 
During  the  soft,  pliant  state  of  the  bones  of  the  skull,  the  oblong  form  which  they  naturally 
assume  approaches  nearly  the  permanent  shape  of  the  American.  At  birth,  the  flattened 
face  and  broad,  smooth  forehead  of  the  infant;  the  position  of  the  eyes,  rather  towards  the 
sides  of  the  head,  and  the  widened  space  between,  represent  the  Mongolian  form,  which, 
in  the  Caucasian,  is  not  obliterated  but  by  degrees,  as  the  child  advances  to  maturity." 
Hamilton  Smith,  commenting  upon  these  interesting  researches,  says:  "Should  the  con- 
ditions of  cerebral  progress  be  more  complete  at  birth  in  the  Caucausian  type,  and  be 
successively  lower  in  the  Mongolic  and  intermediate  Malay  and  American,  with  the  woolly- 
haired  least  developed  of  all,  it  would  follow,  according  to  the  apparently  general  law  of 
progression  in  animated  nature,  that  both  —  or  at  least  the  last-mentioned  —  would  be  in 
the  conditions  which  show  a  more  ancient  date  of  existence  than  the  other,  notwithstanding 
that  both  this  and  the  Mongolic  are  so  constituted  that  the  spark  of  mental  development 
can  be  received  by  them  through  contact  with  the  higher  Caucasian  innervation ;  thus 
appearing,  in  classified  zoology,  to  constitute  perhaps  three  species,  originating  at  different 
epochs,  or  simultaneously  in  separate  regions ;  while,  by  the  faculty  of  fusion  which  the 
last,  or  Caucasian,  imparted  to  them,  progression  up  to  intellectual  equality  would  manifest 
essential  unity,  and  render  all  alike  responsible  beings,  according  to  the  degree  of  their 
existing  capabilities  —  for  this  must  be  the  ultimate  condition  for  which  Man  is  created."80 

From  his  own  researches,  Prof.  Agassiz  concludes  that  it  is  impos- 
sible, in  the  foetal  state,  to  detect  the  anatomical  marks  which  are 
characteristic  of  species.  These  specific  marks  he  assures  us  become 
manifest  as  the  animal,  in  the  course  of  its  development,  approaches 
the  adult  state.  In  like  manner,  the  evolution  of  the  physical  and 
mental  peculiarities  of  the  different  races  of  men  appears  to  com- 
mence at  the  moment  of  birth.  Dr.  Knox,  in  his  recent  communi- 
cations in  the  "  London  Lancet,"  already  referred  to,  maintains  almost 
the  same  opinion.  He  considers  the  embryo  of  any  species  of  any 
natural  family  as  the  most  perfect  of  forms,  embracing  within  itself, 
during  its  phases  of  development,  all  the  forms  or  species  which  that 
natural  family  can  assume  or  has  assumed  in  past  time.  "  In  the 
embryo  and  the  young  individual  of  any  species  of  the  natural 
family  of  the  Salmonidae,  for  example,"  says  he,  "you  will  find  the 
characteristics  of  the  adult  of  all  the  species.  The  same,  I  believe, 
holds  in  man  ;  so  that,  were  all  the  existing  species  of  any  family  to 
be  accidentally  destroyed,  saving  one,  in  the  embryos  and  young  of 
that  one  will  be  found  the  elements  of  all  the  species  ready  to  re- 
appear to  repeople  the  waters  and  the  earth,  the  forms  they  are  to 
assume  being  dependent  on,  therefore  determined  by,  the  existing 
order  of  things.  "With  another  order  will  arise  a  new  series  of 
species,  also  foreseen  and  provided  for  in  the  existing  world." 

so  Nat.  Hist,  of  the  Human  Species,  pp.  176-7.     See  also  Serres'  Anatomie  Compared. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  237 

If  we  carefully  consider  the  development  of  the  cranium,  it  will 
be  seen  that  this  development  goes  on  between,  and  is  modified  by 
two  systems  of  organs  —  externally  the  muscular,  internally  the 
nervous.  The  brain  exerts  a  double  influence,  mechanically  or 
passively  by  its  weight,  and  actively  by  its  growth.  That  the  brain 
completely  fills  its  bony  case,  is  sufficiently  well  known  from  the  fact 
of  the  impressions  left  upon  the  inner  aspect  of  the  cranium  by  the 
cerebral  convolutions  and  vessels.  Very  slight  allowance  need  be 
made  for  the  thickness  of  the  meninges.  That  the  progressive 
development  of  the  brain  is  really  capable  of  exerting  some  force 
upon  the  cranial  bones  surrounding  it,  is  shown  in  the  records  of 
cases  of  hypertrophy  of  that  organ,  where,  upon  post-mortem  exami- 
nation, the  calvaria  being  removed,  the  spongy  mass  has  protruded 
from  the  opening  and  could  not  be  replaced.  That  the  bones  are 
capable  of  yielding  to  a  distending  force  acting  from  within  out- 
wards, is  shown  in  the  cases  of  chronic  hydrocephalus,  where  the 
ventricles  are  found  full  of  water,  the  brain-tissue  flattened  out,  and 
the  bones  greatly  distorted.  Such  a  force  becomes  perceptible  in 
proportion  to  the  degree  of  softness  and  pliancy  of  the  bones.  A 
check  to  its  action  will  be  found  in  the  sutures  and  in  the  amount 
of  resistance  offered  by  the  dura-mater.  Now  it  must  be  obvious 
that  as  long  as  the  sutures  remain  open,  and  the  developmental 
activity  of  the  brain  continues,  the  head  must  enlarge.  If  all  the 
sutures  remain  open,  this  development  will  be  regular  and  in  exact 
proportion  to  the  activity  of  growth  manifested  by  the  different  parts 
of  the  encephalon.  When  a  suture  closes,  further  development  in 
that  direction  will  in  great  measure  terminate.  Of  this  proposition 
Dr.  Morton  gives  us  the  following  example  : 

"I  have  in  my  possession,"  says  he,  "the  skull  of  a  mulatto  boy,  who  died  at  the  age 
of  eighteen  years.  In  this  instance,  the  sagittal  suture  is  entirely  wanting ;  in  conse- 
quence, the  lateral  expansion  of  the  cranium  hiis  ceased  in  infancy,  or  at  whatever  period 
the  suture  became  consolidated.  Hence,  also,  the  diameter  between  the  parietal  protube- 
rances is  less  than  4.5  inches,  instead  of  5,  which  last  is  the  Negro  average.  The  squamous 
sutures,  however,  are  fully  open,  whence  the  skull  has  continued  to  expand  in  the  upward 
direction,  until  it  has  reached  the  average  vertical  diameter  of  the  Negro,  or  5.5  inches. 
The  coronal  suture  is  also  wanting,  excepting  some  traces  at  its  lateral  termini ;  and  the 
result  of  this  last  deficiency  is  seen  in  the  very  inadequate  development  of  the  forehead, 
which  is  low  and  narrow,  but  elongated  below,  through  the  agency  of  the  various  cranio- 
facial sutures.  The  lambdoidal  suture  is  perfect,  thus  permitting  posterior  elongation; 
and  the  growth  in  this  direction,  together  with  the  full  vertical  diameter,  has  enabled  the 
brain  to  attain  the  bulk  of — ■  cubic  inches,  or  about  —  less  than  the  Negro  average.  I  believe 
that  the  absence  or  partial  development  of  the  sutures  may  be  a  cause  of  idiocy  by  check- 
ing the  growth  of  the  brain,  and  thereby  impairing  or  destroying  its  functions."81 

81  See  a  paper  on  the  Size  of  the  Brain  in  the  Various  Races  and  Families  of  .Man ;  with 
Ethnological  Remarks;  by  Samuel  George  Morton,  M.  D. :  published  in  "Types  of  Man- 
kind," by  Nott  and  Gliddon,  Philadelphia,  1854,  p.  303,  note.  See  also  Proceedings  of  Phila. 
Acad.  Nat.  Sci.  for  August,  1841. 


238  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

From  the  Mortonian  collection,  other  illustrations  of  this  fact  might 
be  drawn ;  but  neither  space  nor  time  permits  their  introduction  here. 

In  the  study  of  the  sutures,  considerations  of  a  highly  philosophical 
character  are  involved.  Their  history  enables  us  to  perceive  why 
the  cranium  was  not  formed  of  one  piece,  and  why  there  should  be 
two  frontal  and  two  parietal  bones,  and  only  one  occipital.  Such  an 
arrangement  obviously  allows  the  fullest  development  of  the  anterior 
and  middle  lobes  of  the  cerebrum, — the  organs,  according  to  Carus, 
of  intelligence,  reflection,  and  judgment.82  That  the  sutures  are 
tutamina  cerebri,  that  in  the  foetus  they  permit  the  cranial  bones  to 
overlap  during  parturition,  and  thus,  by  diminishing  the  size  of  the 
head  in  certain  of  its  diameters,  and  producing  anaesthesia,  facilitate 
labor,  curtailing  its  difficulties  and  diminishing  its  dangers  to  both 
mother  and  child,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Such  provisions  are  of 
high  interest,  as  exhibiting  the  harmony  of  nature.  But  when  we 
call  to  mind  that  the  skull  is  a  vertebra  in  its  highest  known  state 
of  development ;  that  the  enclosed  brain,  as  the  organ  of  intellection, 
is  the  distinguishing  mark  of  man ;  that  the  development  of  the 
cranium  goes  on  pari  passu  with  that  of  the  encephalon ;  that  the 
various  degrees  of  human  intelligence  are  definitely  related  to  certain 
permanent  skull-forms  ;  and  that  the  cranial  sutures,  in  conjunction 
with  the  ossific  centres,  are  the  guiding  agents  in  the  assumption  of 
these  forms — it  will  be  evident  that  a  higher  and  far  more  compre- 
hensive significance  is  attached  to  these  bony  interspaces.  Again, 
no  extended  investigation  has  been  instituted,  as  far  as  I  am  aware, 
to  determine  the  period  at  which  the  different  cranial  sutures  are 
closed  in  the  various  races  of  men.  The  importance  of  such  an  in- 
quiry becomes  apparent,  when  we  ask  ourselves  the  following  ques- 
tions : — 1.  Does  the  cranium  attain  its  fullest  development  in  all  the 
races  at  the  same,  or  at  different  periods  of  life  ?  and  2.  To  what 
extent  are  race-forms  of  the  cranium  dependent  upon  the  growth  and 
modifications  of  the  sutures  ? 

"The  most  obvious  use  of  the  sutures,"  according  to  Dr.  Morton,  "is  to  subserve  the 
process  of  growth,  which  they  do  by  osseous  depositions  at  their  margins.  Hence,  one  of 
these  sutures  is  equivalent  to  the  interrupted  structure  that  exists  between  the  shaft  and 
epiphysis  of  a  long  bone  in  the  growing  state.  The  shaft  grows  in  length  chiefly  by  accre- 
tions at  its  extremities ;  and  the  epiphysis,  like  the  cranial  suture,  disappears  when  the 
perfect  development  is  accomplished.  Hence,  we  may  infer  that  the  skull  ceases  to  expand 
whenever  the  sutures  become  consolidated  with  the  proximate  bones.  In  other  words,  the 
growth  of  the  brain,  whether  in  viviparous  or  in  oviparous  animals,  is  consentaneous  with 
that  of  the  skull,  and  neither  can  be  developed  without  the  presence  of  free  sutures."83 

82  "  Das  besondere  Organ  des  erkenuenden,  vergleichenden  und  urtheilenden  Geistesleben." 
—  Symbolik  der  menschlichen  Gestalt,  von  Dr.  C.  G.  Carus,  Leipzig,  1853. 

83  See  article  on  Size  of  the  Brain,  &c,  quoted  above,  p.  303. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  239 

From  investigations  of  this  nature,  and  from  other  considerations, 
Dr.  M.  concluded  that  the  growth  of  the  brain  was  arrested  at  the 
adult  age,  that  the  consolidation  of  the  sutures  was  an  indication  of 
the  full  development  of  both  cranium  and  brain,  and  that  any  in- 
crease or  decrease  in  the  size  or  weight  of  the  brain  after  the  adult 
period  would  not  be  likely  to  affect  the  internal  capacity  of  the  cra- 
nium, which,  therefore,  indicates  the  maximum  size  of  the  encephalon 
at  the  time  of  its  greatest  development.  Combe,  however,  affirms 
that  when  the  brain  contracts  in  old  age,  the  tabula  vitrea  of  the 
cranium  also  contracts,  so  as  to  keep  itself  applied  to  its  contents, 
the  outer  or  fibrous  table  undergoing  no  change.84  It  is,  to  some 
extent,  true  that  in  the  very  aged,  even  when  the  skull-bones  become 
consolidated  into  one  piece,  some  changes  may  result  from  an  undue 
activity  of  the  absorbents,  or  some  defect  in  the  nutritive  operations. 
Under  such  circumstances,  the  cranial  bones  may  be  thinned  and 
altered  slightly  in  form.  Davis  gives  an  example  of  this  change,  in 
the  skull  of  an  aged  Chinese  in  his  collection,  in  which  the  central 
area  of  the  parietal  bones  is  thinned  and  depressed  over  an  extent 
equal  to  four  square  inches  to  about  one-third  of  an  inch  deep  in  the 
central  part.85  Such  changes,  however,  are  too  limited  in  their  extent 
to  demand  more  than  a  passing  notice. 

The  pressure  of  the  brain,  exerted  through  its  weight,  is  felt 
mainly  upon  the  base  and  inferior  lateral  parts. 

Prof.  Engel,  in  a  valuable  monograph  upon  skull-forms,86  particu- 
larly calls  attention  to  the  action  of  the  muscles  in  determining  these 
forms.  He  considers  the  influence  of  the  occipito-frontalis  as  almost 
inappreciable,  —  so  slight,  indeed,  that  it  may  be  neglected  in  our 
inquiries.  The  action  of  the  temporal  and  pterygoid  muscles  and  of 
the  group  attached  to  the  occiput,  though  more  evident,  is  still  not 
worthy  of  much  consideration.  To  the  action  of  the  musculus 
sterno-cleido-mastoideus,  he  assigns  a  greater  value. 

"  This  muscle,"  says  he,  "tends  to  produce  a  downward  displacement  at  the  mastoid  por- 
tion of  the  temporal  bone,  which  will  be  the  more  considerable,  as  the  lower  point  of  its  attach- 
ment —  the  sternum  and  clavicle  —  is  able  to  offer  much  greater  resistance  than  the  upper. 
In  addition  to  this,  the  unusual  length  of  the  muscle  produces,  by  its  contraction,  more 
effect,  and,  hence,  favors  a  greater  displacement  of  the  bones  to  which  it  is  attached.  The 
bone  upon  which  it  exerts  its  influence  is  also  very  loose  in  early  life,  and  even  during  the 
first  year  of  our  existence,  when  extensive  motions  of  the  muscle  already  take  place,  it  is 
not  as  firmly  fixed  as  the  other  bones ;  hence,  it  becomes  probable  that  the  influence  of  this 
muscle  upon  the  position  of  the  bones  of  the  skull  will  be  a  demonstrable  one. 

"  It  may,  however,  be  admitted  &  priori,  that  in  spite  of  all  these  favorable  circumstances, 

84  System  of  Phrenology,  p.  83. 

85  Cr.  Brit.,  p.  6.     See  also  Gall,  "  Sur  les  Fonctions  du  Cerveau,"  III,  53,  1825. 
ss  Op.  cit. 


240  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

the  displacement  will  not  exceed  a  magnitude  of  one,  or,  at  most,  three  millimetres.  With 
this  alone,  we  will,  it  is  true,  not  yet  explain  that  variety  in  the  form  of  the  skull  which  not 
only  distinguishes  one  man  from  another,  but  has  also  been  characterized  as  the  type  of 
progeny  and  race.  Notwithstanding  its  seeming  insignificance,  however,  this  muscular 
action  is  a  very  important  agent,  and  plays  the  principal  part  in  the  formation  of  the  skull, 
although  other  circumstances  of  an  auxiliary  or  restrictive  nature  must  not  be  neglected  — 
circumstances  which  may  increase,  diminish,  or  modify  this  displacement. 

"  The  effect  of  this  muscular  action  is  considerably  increased  by  superadded  conditions. 
The  head  rests  upon  the  condyles  of  the  occipital  bone.  Partly  on  account  of  muscular 
action,  and  partly  from  the  pressure  of  the  brain,  the  basal  bones  of  the  skull  are  exposed 
to  a  downward  displacement :  the  condyloid  portions  of  the  occiput,  alone,  are  not.  This 
impossibility  to  change  their  position  parallel  with  the  displacement  of  the  other  basal  bones, 
is  equivalent  to  an  upward  pressure  of  the  occipital  condyles,  and  this  must  considerably 
increase  the  downward  traction  of  the  sterno-cleido-mastoideus. 

"  The  occipital  and  temporal  regions,  then,  are  subjected  to  a  downward  traction,  while 
the  condyles  are  pressed  upward :  moreover,  the  brain  produces,  upon  all  the  basal  bones 
except  the  condyles,  a  downward  pressure  corresponding  to  its  height;  at  the  partes  condy- 
loidea,  this  downward  pressure  is  obviated  by  the  resistance  of  the  vertebral  column." 

Notwithstanding  the  significance  of  the  facts  thus  far  adduced,  it 
has  been  boldly  and  unhesitatingly  maintained  that  civilization — by 
which  is  meant  the  aggregate  intellectual  and  moral  influences  of 
society  —  exerts  a  positive  influence  over  the  form  and  size  of  the 
cranium,  modifying  not  only  its  individual,  but  also  its  race-charac- 
ters, to  such  an  extent,  indeed,  as  entirely  to  change  the  original 
type  of  structure.  This  doctrine  finds  its  chief  advocates  among  the 
writers  of  the  phrenological  school,  though  it  is  not  wholly  confined 
to  them.  Among  its  most  recent  supporters  we  find  the  Baron  J.  "W", 
de  Muller,  who,  in  a  quarto  pamphlet  of  74  pages,87  devotes  a  sec- 
tion to  the  consideration  of  the  "Action  de  I' intelligence  sur  les  formes 
de  la  tete:" 

"Nous  espe>ons  prouver,"  says  he,  "de  meme  que  les  formes  du  crane  ont  des  rapports 
intimes  avec  le  degre'  de  civilisation  auquel  un  peuple  est  parvenu,  et  que  par  consequent 
elles  non  plus  ne  peuvent  justifier  une  division  en  races  des  habitants  de  la  terre,  a  moins 
de  classer  les  hommes  d'apres  leur  plus  ou  moins  d'intelligence,  et  de  justifier  ainsi,  au  nom 
de  la  supr^matie  de  la  raison,  non-seulment  tous  les  abus  de  l'esclavage,mais  encore  toutes 
les  tyrannies  individuelles." 

The  subject-matter  embodied  in  the  above  quotation,  though  pro- 
fessedly obscure,  is  beginning  to  assume  a  more  certain  character  in 
consequence  of  the  facts  brought  to  light  during  the  controversies 
between  the  Unitarians  and  Diversitarians  in  Ethnology — facts  which 
intimately  affect  the  great  question  of  permanency  of  cranial  types. 
Confronted  with  the  facts  presently  to  be  brought  forward,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  doctrine  of  the  mobility  of  cranial  forms  under  the 

87  Des  Causes  de  la  Coloration  de  la  Peau  et  des  differences  dans  les  Formes  du  Crane, 
au  point  de  vue  de  l'unite'  du  genre  humain.  Par  le  Baron  J.  W.  de  Muller.  Stutt- 
gart, 1853. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  241 

influence  of  education,  &c,  is  by  uo  means  a  settled  fact,  as  many 
of  its  advocates  appear  to  think.  "  Speaking  of  the  great  races  of 
mankind,"  very  appropriately  remarks  Davis,  "whether  it  be  in  the 
size  of  the  brain,  or  whether  in  its  quality,  or  whether  it  be,  as  the 
phrenologists  maintain,  in  the  development  of  its  particular  parts, 
each  race  is  endowed  with  such  special  faculties  of  the  mind,  moral 
and  intellectual,  as  to  impart  to  it  a  distinct  and  definite  position 
within  which  its  powers  and  capabilities  range.  "We  know  of  no 
valid  evidence  that  can  be  brought  forward  for  thinking  this  definite 
position  can  be  varied  in  the  mass.  We  may  therefore  take  this 
further  ground  for  questioning  the  assumed  pliancy  of  the  form 
of  skull." 

The  indefatigable  traveller  and  "Directeur  du  Jardin  Royal  de 
Zoologie  de  Bruxelles,"  has  condensed  in  a  few  pages,  at  once  the 
best  and  most  commonly  used  arguments  to  sustain  the  hypothesis 
which  constitutes  the  starting-point  of  the  above-mentioned  article. 
It  has  appeared  to  me  not  inappropriate  to  devote  a  few  words,  in 
this  hasty  sketch,  to  the  examination  of  the  tenability  of  the  two 
most  important  examples  adduced  by  Baron  M.,  whose  brochure  I 
subject  to  critical  inquiry,  simply  because  it  is  one  of  the  most  con- 
cise exponents  of  a  generally-spread,  but,  as  it  appears  to  me,  erro- 
neous, and  therefore  injurious  view.  And  I  am  the  more  especially 
urged  to  this,  since  the  question  of  the  permanency  or  non-perma- 
nency of  human  types  occupies  the  highest  philosophical  position  in 
the  entire  field  of  Ethnographic  inquiry.  Its  relations  are,  indeed, 
fundamental ;  for,  according  as  it  is  definitively  settled  in  the  affirma- 
tive or  negative,  will  Ethnography — especially  the  cranioscopical 
branch  —  assume  the  dignity  and  certainty  of  a  science,  or  be  de- 
graded to  the  vague  position  of  an  interesting  but  merely  speculative 
inquiry.  "If  the  size  of  the  brain,"  says  Mr.  Combe,  in  allusion  to 
the  labors  of  Morton,  as  published  in  Crania  Americana,  "and  the 
proportions  of  its  different  parts,  be  the  index  to  natural  national 
character,  the  present  work,  which  represents  with  great  fidelity  the 
skulls  of  the  American  tribes,  will  be  an  authentic  record  in  whieb 
the  philosopher  may  read  the  native  aptitudes,  dispositions,  and 
mental  force  of  these  families  of  mankind.  If  this  doctrine  be 
unfounded,  these  skulls  are  mere  facts  in  Natural  History,  present- 
ing no  particular  information  as  to  the  mental  qualities  of  the 
people."  If  there  be  this  permanency  of  cranial  form  in  the  great 
leading  or  typical  stocks  —  if,  in  other  words,  Nature  alters  not, 
but  ever  truly  and  unchangeably  represents  that  primitive  Divine 
Idea,  of  which  she  is  but  the  objective  embodiment  and  indi- 
cation—  then  the  labors  of  Blumenbach,  Morton,  Retzius,  ISTilss  n, 
16 


242  THE     CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

Davis,  and  other  cranio scopists,  have  not  been  toilfully  wrought  out 
in  vain ;  if,  however,  this  permanency  is  but  a  dream,  if  typical 
skull-forms  vary  in  periods  of  time  not  greater  than  the  historic, 
then  all  is  confusion  and  uncertainty,  and  the  labors  of  the  craniolo- 
gist  hopeless  for  good,  alike  without  objects  and  without  results. 

Now  a  moment's  reflection  will  show  that  this  question  of  perma- 
nency underlies  and  in  great  measure  substitutes  itself  for  the  fiercely- 
vexed  problem  of  the  unity  or  diversity  of  human  oiigin. 

"S'il  est  demontreV'  says  Gobineau,  "que  les  races  humaines  sont,  chacune,  enferme'es 
dans  une  sorte  d'individualite'  d'ou  rien  ne  les  peut  faire  sortir  que  le  melange,  alors  la  doc- 
trine des  Unitaires  se  trouve  bien  pressee  et  ne  peut  se  soustraire  a  reeonnaitre  que,  du 
moment  ou  les  types  sont  si  eompletement  he're'ditaires,  si  constants,  si  permanenis,  en  un 
mot,  malgre'  les  climats  et  le  temps,  l'humanite'  n'est  pas  moins  completement  et  in4branla- 
blement  partagee  que  si  les  distinctions  spe'cifiques  prenaient  leur  source  dans  une  diversity 
primitive  d'origine."88 

After  citing  the  Barabra  or  Berberins  of  the  Eile-valley,  and  the 
Jews,  in  proof  of  the  proposition  under  consideration,  our  author 
proceeds  to  speak  of  the  Turks  in  the  following  manner. 

"Les  Turcs  d'Europe  et  de  1'Asie  mineure  nous  offrent  une  autre  preuve  que  la  forme 
caracteristique  du  crane  peut  se  modifier  completement  dans  le  cours  des  siecles.  Ce  peuple 
nous  prfeente  le  modele  d'un  type  elliptique  pur  et  ne  se  distingue  rien  de  la  masse  des 
nations  6urope"ennes.  Par  contre,  il  differe  tant  avee  les  Turcs  de  TAsie  centrale,  que 
beaucoup  d'e'crivains  le  placent  au  nombre  des  nations  caucasiques,  tandis  qu'ils  rattachent 
les  Turcs  d'Asie  a  la  race  mongole.  Or,  I'histoire  demontre  d'une  maniere  irrefutable  que 
ces  deux  peuples  appartiennent  au  groupe  de  lAsie  septentrionale,  avec  lequel  les  Turcs  de 
l'Orient  conservent  les  relations  les  plus  intimes,  non-seulement  au  point  de  vue  ge"ogra- 
pMque,  mais  par  la  concordance  de  tous  les  usages  de  la  vie.  La  transformation  du  crane 
a  eu  lieu  non  chez  les  Turcs  de  l'Asie  centrale,  mais  chez  ceux  de  FEurope.  Ceux-ci  ont 
perdu  peu  a  peu  le  type  pyramidal  de  leurs  peres  et  ils  l'ont  e'change'  contre  la  plus  belle  des 
formes  elliptiques.  Or,  tout  en  6tant  les  reprtisentants  par  excellence  de  cette  forme,  ils 
sont  aussi  les  consanguins  les  plus  proches  de  ce  peuple  hideux  aux  yeux  louches,  qui  mene 

paitre  ses  chevaux  dans  les  steppes  de  la  Tartarie Nous  devons   attribuer  cette 

modification  du  crane  aux  ameliorations  sociales,  a  la  civilisation  qui  tend  toujours  a,  <5qui- 
librer  toutes  les  anomalies  des  formes  faciales,  a  niveler  toutes  les  protuberances  du  crane 
pyramidal  ou  prognatique  et  a  les  mener  a  la  syme'trie  du  type  de  l'ellipse.  Les  Turcs 
orientaux  sont  Teste's  ce  qu'6taient  les  anciens  Turcs ;  place's  sur  le  meme  degrti  inf6rieur  de 
la  civilisation,  ils  ont  conserve  le  type  des  peuples  nomades." 

The  mode  of  argument  here  employed  appears  to  be  this.  In  the 
first  place  it  is  taken  for  granted  that  the  Turks  are  of  Asiatic  origin ; 
secondly,  in  consequence  of  certain  unimportant  resemblances,  they 
are  assumed  to  be  affiliated  with  the  Laplanders  and  Ostiacs  through 
what  are  erroneously  supposed  to  be  their  Finnic  or  Tchudic  branches ; 
and  lastly,  as  relations  of  the  Lapps,  (?)  it  is  inferred  that  they  must 
have  originally  presented  all  the  Mongolic  characters  in  an  eminent 
degree,  and  been  remarkable  for  low  statures,  ugly  features,  &c. 

88  Op.  cit,  1. 1,  p.  212. 


OF    THE     RAGES    OF    MEN.  243 

These  premises  supposed  to  be  established,  a  comparison  is  next 
instituted  between  the  Turks  of  Europe  and  of  Asia  Minor,  and  a 
conclusion  drawn  adverse  to  permanency  of  cranial  types. 

It  is  of  vital  importance  to  cranioscopy,  that  these  arguments 
should  be  carefully  sifted,  and  examined  in  detail.  It  has  been  re- 
cently shown  that  at  so  remote  a  period  as  the  days  of  Abraham, 
numerous  Gothic  tribes  occupied  those  boundless  steppes  of  High 
Asia,  which  lie  outstretched  between  the  Sea  of  Aral  and  Katai,  and 
between  Thibet  and  Siberia.89  From  the  Altai  Mountains  of  this 
region  appear  to  have  descended,  at  this  distant  epoch,  the  Orghuse 
progenitors  of  the  Turks.  ISTow  it  is  a  note-worthy  fact,  that  the 
Oriental  writers,  though  familiar  with  the  European  standards  of 
beauty,  have  filled  their  writings,  even  at  a  very  early  period,  with 
the  highest  eulogies  upon  the  form  and  features  of  the  tribes  inhabi- 
ting Turkestan.  'The  descriptions  they  give  of  these  tribes  by  no 
means  apply  to  the  true  Mongol  appearance,  to  be  met  with  on  the 
desert  of  Schamo.  Haneberg  describes  Schafouz,  the  daughter  of 
the  Ehakan  of  the  Turks,  who  lived  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixth 
century,  as  the  most  beautiful  woman  of  her  time.90  Alexander  von 
Humboldt  tells  us  that  the  monk  Rubruquis,  sent  by  St.  Louis  on  an 
embassy  to  the  Mongolian  sovereign,  spoke  of  the  striking  resem- 
blance which  the  Eastern  monarch  bore  to  the  deceased  M.  Jean  de 
Beaumont,  in  complexion,  features,  &c.  "  This  physiognomical  ob- 
servation," says  Humboldt,  "  merits  some  attention,  when  we  call  to 
mind  the  fact,  that  the  family  of  Tchinguiz  were  really  of  Turkish, 
not  of  Mogul  origin."  Further  on,  he  remarks,  "The  absence  of 
Mongolian  features  strikes  us  also  in  the  portraits  which  we  possess 
of  the  Baburides,  the  conquerors  of  India."91 

"The  Atrak  Turks,"  writes  Hamilton  Smith,  "more  especially  the  Osmanlis,  differ  from 
the  other  Toorkees,  by  their  lofty  stature,  European  features,  abundant  beards,  and  fair 
complexions,  derived  from  their  original  extraction  being  Caucasian,  of  Yuchi  race,  or  from 
an  early  intermixture  with  it,  and  with  the  numerous  captives  they  were  for  ages  incor- 
porating from  Kashmere,  Afghanistan,  Persia,  Syria,  Natolia,  Armenia,  Greece,  and  eastern 
Europe.  Both  these  conjectures  may  be  true,  because  the  Caucasian  stock,  wherever  we 
find  it,  contrives  to  rise  into  power,  from  whatever  source  it  may  be  drawn,  and  therefore, 
may  in  part  have  been  pure  before  the  nation  left  eastern  Asia,  while  the  subordinate 
hordes  remained  more  or  less  Hyperborean  in  character ;  as,  in  truth,  the  normal  Toorkees 
about  the  lower  Oxus  still  are.  All  have,  however,  a  peculiar  form  of  the  posterior  portion 
of  the  skull,  which  is  less  in  depth  than  the  European,  and  does  not  appear  to  be  a  result 
of  the  tight  swathing  of  the  turban.  Osmanli  Turks  are  a  handsome  race,  and  their  chil- 
dren, in  particular,  are  beautiful."92 

89  Consult,  among  other  works,  Humboldt's  Asie  Centrale,  vol.  II. ;  Ritter's  Erdhunde 
Asien,  vol.  II. ;  and  Lassen's  Zeitschrifl  fur  die  Kunde  des  Morgenlandes,  vol.  n. 

90  Zeitschrifl  fur  die  Kunde  des  Morgenlandes,  vol.  I.,  p.  187. 

91  Asie  Centrale,,  vol.  I.,  p.  248.     See  also  Gobineau,  Sur  V  InegaliU,  $c,  Chap.  XI. 

92  Op.  cit.  p.  327. 


244  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

Now,  the  beautiful  Osmaulis  are  the  lineal  descendants  of  the 
warlike  Seldjuks,  who,  in  the  ninth  century,  suddenly  made  their 
appearance  in  Southern  Asia,  overthrew  the  empire  of  the  Khalifs, 
and  founded  the  states  of  Iran,  Kerman,  and  Roum,  or  Iconium. 
History  informs  us  that  these  Seldjuks  were,  by  no  means,  careful 
about  preserving  the  purity  of  their  genealogy ;  for  it  is  not  difficult 
to  adduce  instances  of  their  chiefs  intermarrying  with  Arabian  and 
Christian  women.  In  short,  when  we  consider  that,  as  a  body,  they 
were  constantly  engaged  in  extensive  predatory  excursions,  during 
which  they  enjoyed  almost  unlimited  opportunities  for  capturing 
slaves  and  amalgamating  with  them ;  that  in  compliance  with  the 
invitation  of  Osman,  the  son  of  Ortogrhul,  great  numbers  of  the 
adventurous,  the  discontented,  and  the  desperate,  from  all  the  sur- 
rounding nations,  fled  to  his  standard,  and  gradually  swelled  the  ranks 
of  the  Osmanlis ;  that  at  a  later  period,  the  thinning  of  their  num- 
bers in  war  was  avowedly  provided  for  by  the  capture  of  slaves ; 
that  in  the  ranks  of  the  Janissaries,  a  military  order  instituted  in  the 
early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  by  Orkhan,  one-fifth  of  all  the 
European  captives  were  enrolled ;  that  for  two  centuries  and  a  half 
this  body  was  entirely  dependent  for  its  renewal  upon  the  Christian 
slaves  captured  in  Poland,  Germany,  Italy,  &c. ;  that  in  the  course 
of  four  centuries,  at  least  half  a  million  of  European  males  derived 
from  the  above-mentioned  sources,  and  by  piracy  along  the  Mediter- 
ranean, had  been  incorporated  into  the  Turkish  population  ; — when 
we  consider  all  these,  and  many  other  facts  of  a  like  nature,  we  are 
forced  to  conclude  with  the  erudite  Gobineau,  that  the  history  of  so 
amalgamated  a  nation  furnishes  no  arguments,  either  for  or  against 
the  doctrine  of  permanency  of  type. 

Further  on,  and  confirmatory  of  the  above  remarks,  the  reader 
will  find  some  allusion  to  the  special  character  of  the  Turkish 
cranium,  and  the  marks  which  distinguish  it  from  the  Mongolian, 
Finnic,  and  other  forms  of  the  skull. 

The  Magyars  are  also  produced  as  an  example  of  the  mutability 
of  cranial  form. 

"  Bien  qu'ils  ne  le  cedent  a  aucun  peuple  ni  en  beauty  physique  ni  en  deVeloppenient 
intellectuel,  ils  descendent,  d'apres  les  indications  de  l'histoire  et  de  la  linguistique  com- 
pared, de  la  grande  race  qui  occupe  1'Asie  septentrionale.  lis  sont  du  meme  sang  que  les 
Samoiedes  indolents,  les  Ostiacs  stupides  et  dSbiles,  les  Lapons  indomptables.  II  y  a  envi- 
ron urille  ans,  les  codescendants  de  ces  peuplades  meprisees,  les  Magyars  modernes,  furent 
chassis  par  une  invasion  de  Turcs  bors  de  la  Grande-Hongrie,  pays  avoisinant  l'Oural, 
qu'ils  habitaient  a  cette  e'poque.  A  leur  tour  ils  expulserent  les  races  slaves  des  plaines 
fertiles  de  la  Hongrie  actuelle.  Par  cette  migration,  les  Magyars  ^cbangerent  un  des  plus 
rudes  climats  de  Fancien  continent,  une  contre'e  sauvage  dans  laquelle  FOstiac  etle  Samoi'ede 
ne  peuvent  s'adonner  a,  la  chasse  que  pendant  quelques  mois,  contre  un  pays  plus  meri- 
dional, d'une  luxuriante  fertility.     Ils  furent  entrainfe  it  se  depouiller  peu  a  peu  de  leurs 


OF     THE     RACES    OF     MEN.  245 

moeurs  grossieres  et  a  se  rapprocher  de  leurs  voisins  plus  civilises.  Apres  uu  millier  d'an- 
n6es,  la  forme  pyramidale  de  leur  crane  est  devenue  elliptique.  L'hypothese  d'un  croise- 
ment  general  de  races  n'est  pas  admissible  quand  il  s'agit  des  Magyars  si  fiers,  yivant  dans 
l'isolement  le  plus  severe.  La  simple  expatriation  ne  suffit  pas  non  plus  pour  modifier  la 
forme  du  crane.  Le  Lapon,  issu  du  meme  sang  que  le  Magyar,  a  comme  lui  aussi  change' 
de  demeure ;  il  vit  maintenant  en  Europe ;  mais  il  y  a  conserve  le  type  pyramidal  de  son 
crane  avec  sa  vie  de  nomade  sauvage." 

This  asserted  transformation  of  the  Samoiede  or  Northern  Asiatic 
type  into  the  Hungarian,  in  the  short  space  of  eight  hundred,  or,  at 
most,  one  thousand  years,  stands  unparalleled  in  history.  But  we 
may  ask,  if  the  Magyar  has  thus  changed  the  form  of  his  head,  why 
have  not  his  habits  and  mode  of  life  changed  accordingly  ?  Why, 
after  a  residence  of  nearly  one  thousand  years  in  Hungary,  does  he 
still  withhold  his  hand  from  agricultural  pursuits,  and,  depending 
for  his  support  upon  his  herds,  leave  to  the  aboriginal  Slovack  popu- 
lation the  task  of  cultivating  the  soil?  Why  does  he  jealously  pre- 
serve his  own  language,  and,  though  professing  the  same  religion, 
refuse  to  intermingle  with  his  Slavonian  neighbors  ?  Can  it  be  that 
the  language,  manners,  and  customs  of  a  people  are  more  durable 
than  the  hardest  parts  of  their  organism  —  the  bony  skeleton  ?  If 
the  reader  will  consult  the  able  essay  of  Gekando,  upon  the  origin 
of  the  Hungarians,93  he  will  find  a  simple  explanation  of  these  appa- 
rent difficulties.  It  is  there  shown  by  powerful  philological  argu- 
ments, and  upon  the  authority  of  Greek  and  Arabian  historians  and 
Hungarian  annalists,  that  the  Magyars  are  a  remnant  of  the  warlike 
Huns,  who  in  the  fourth  century  spread  such  terror  through  Europe. 
Now,  the  Huns  were  by  no  means  a  pure  Mongolic  race,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  an  exceedingly  mixed  people.  In  the  veins  of  the  so-called 
White  Huns,  who  formed  a  portion  of  Attila's  heterogeneous  horde, 
Germanic  blood  flowed  freely.  "  In  the  whole  of  the  high  region 
west  of  the  Caspian,"  says  Hamilton  Smith,  "to  the  Euxine  and 
eastern  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  as  far  as  the  Hellespont,  it  is 
difficult,  if  uot  impossible,  to  separate  distinctly  the  Finnic  from  the 
pure  Germanic  and  Celtic  nations." 94  Humboldt,  in  the  Asie  Centrale, 
alludes  to  the  Khirghiz-Kasakes  as  a  mixed  race,  and  tells  us  that,  in 
569,  Zemarch,  the  ambassador  of  Justinian  H.,  received  from  the 
Turkish  chief  Dithouboul  a  present  of  a  Khirghiz  concubine  who 
was  partly  white.  He  Gobineau  considers  the  Hungarians  to  be 
White  Suns  of  Germanic  origin,  and  attributes  to  a  slight  intermix- 
ture with  the  Mongolian  stock  their  somewhat  angular  and  bony 
facial  conformation.95 

93  Essai  Historique  sur  FOrigine  des  Hongrois.     Par  A.  De  Gerando.     Paris,  1844.     See 
also  Hamilton  Smith's  Nat.  Hist,  of  Human  Species,  pp.  323,  325. 
<»  Op.  cit.,  p.  325.  »5  Op.  cit.,  p.  223. 


246  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

The  facts  attesting  the  pertinacity  with  which  the  distinguishing 
physical  characters  of  the  different  races  of  men  maintain  themselves 
through  long  periods  of  time,  and  iinder  very  varying  conditions,  are 
as  numerous  as  they  are  striking.     The  Arabian  type  of  men,  as 
seen  to-day  upon  the  burning  plains  of  Arabia,  or  in  the  fertile 
regions  of  Malabar,  Coromandel,  and  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Ocean, 
is  identical  with  the  representations  upon  the  Egyptian  monuments, 
where,  also,  we  find  figures  of  the  prognathous  ISTegro  head,  differing 
not  a  whit  from  that  type  as  it  now  exists.    From  their  original  borne 
in  Palestine,  the  Jews  have  been  scattered  abroad  through  countries 
differing  most  widely  in  climatic  and  geographical  features,96  and,  in 
many  instances,  have  departed  from  their  primitive  habits  of  life,  yet 
under  every  sky,  and  in  every  latitude,  they  can  be  singled  out  from 
amidst  other  human  types.     In  the  streets  of  San  Francisco  or  Lon- 
don, on  the  arid  wastes  of  Arabia,  and  beneath  a  cloudless  Italian 
sky,  the  pure  unmixed  Jew  presents  us  with  the  same  facial  linea- 
ments, and  the  same  configuration  of  skull.     "  J'ai  eu  occasion," 
writes  Gobineau,  "  d' examiner  un  homme  appartenant  a  cette  der- 
niere  categorie  (Polish  Jews).     La  coupe  de  son  visage  trahissait 
parfaitement  son  origine.     Ses  yeux  surtout  etaient  inoubliables. 
Cet  habitant  du  Nbrd,  dont  les   aneetres  directs  vivaient,  depuis 
plusieurs  generations,  dans  la  neige,  semblait  avoir  ete  bruni,  de  la 
veille,  par  les  rayons  du  soleil  Syrien."     The  Zingarri  or  Gypsies 
everywhere  preserve  their  peculiar  oriental  physiognomy,  although, 
according  to  Borrow,  there  is  scarcely  a  part  of  the  habitable  world 
where  they  are  not  to  be  found ;  their  tents  being  alike  pitched  on 
the  heaths  of  Brazil,  and  the  ridges  of  the  Himalayan  hills ;  and 
their  language  heard  at  Moscow  and  Madrid,  in  the  streets  of  London 
and  Stamboul.     "Wherever  they  are  found,  their  manners  and  cus- 
toms are  virtually  the  same,  though  somewhat  modified  by  circum- 
stances ;  the  language  they  speak  amongst  themselves,  and  of  which 
they  are  particularly  anxious  to  keep  others  in  ignorance,  is  in  all 
countries  one  and  the  same,  but  has  been  subjected  more  or  less  to 
modification;   their  countenances  exhibit  a  decided  family  resem- 
blance, but  are  darker  or  fairer,  according  to  the  temperature  of  the 
cliruate,  but  invariably  darker,  at  least  in  Europe,  than  the  natives 
of  the  countries  in  which  they  dwell,  for  example,  England  and 

96  We  find  them  scattered  along  the  entire  African  Coast,  from  Morocco  to  Egypt,  and 
appearing  in  other  parts  of  this  continent,  numbering,  according  to  Weimar,  some  504,000 
souls.  In  Mesopotamia  and  Assyria,  Asiatic  Turkey,  Arabia,  Hindostan,  China,  Turkistan, 
the  Province  of  Iran ;  in  Russia,  Poland,  European  Turkey,  Germany,  Prussia,  Netherlands, 
France,  Italy,  Great  Britain,  and  America,  they  are  numbered  by  thousands. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  247 

Russia,  Germany  and  Spain.97  The  physical  characters  of  the  present 
Assyrian  nations  identify  them  with  those  who  anciently  occupied 
the  same  geographical  area,  and  who  are  figured  on  the  monuments 
of  Persepolis,  and  the  has-reliefs  of  Khorsabad. 

"Notwithstanding  the  mixtures  of  race  during  two  centuries,"  says  Dr.  Pickering,  "no 
one  has  remarked  a  tendency  to  a  deveiopment  of  a  new  race  in  the  United  States.  In 
Arabia,  where  the  mixtures  are  more  complicated,  and  have  been  going  on  from  time  imme- 
morial, the  result  does  not  appear  to  have  been  different.  On  the  Egyptian  monuments,  I 
was  unable  to  detect  any  change  in  the  races  of  the  human  family.  Neither  does  written 
history  afford  evidence  of  the  extinction  of  one  physical  race  of  men,  or  of  the  development 
of  another  previously  unknown."98 

The  population  of  Spain,  like  that  of  France,  consists  of  several 
races  ethnically  distinct  from  each  other.  Erom  these  different  strata, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  Spanish  people,  have  been  derived  the  inhabitants 
of  Central  and  South  America.  Of  these  settlers  in  the  New  "World, 
Humboldt  thus  speaks : 

"  The  Andalusians  and  Carrarians  of  Venezuela,  the  Mountaineers  and  Biscayans  of 
Mexico,  the  Catalonians  of  Buenos  Ayres,  evince  considerable  differences  in  their  aptitude  for 
agriculture,  for  the  mechanieal  arts,  for  commerce,  and  for  all  objects  connected  with  intel- 
lectual development.  Each  of  these  races  has  preserved  in  the  New  as  in  the  Old  World, 
the  shades  that  constitute  its  national  physiognomy ;  its  asperity  or  mildness  of  character ; 
its  freedom  from  sordid  feelings,  or  its  excessive  love  of  gain ;  its  social  hospitality,  or  its 

taste  for  solitude In  the  inhabitants  of  Caraccas,  Santa  Fe",  Quito,  and  Buenos 

Ayres,  we  still  recognise  the  features  that  belong  to  the  race  of  the  first  settlers."  " 

A  remarkable  instance  of  this  permanence  of  physical  character  is 
shown  in  the  Maragatos  or  Moorish  Goths,  whom,  Borrow  informs 
us,  are  perhaps  the  most  singular  caste  to  be  found  amongst  the 
chequered  population  of  Spain. 

"They  have,"  says  he,  "their  own  peculiar  customs  and  dress,  and  never  intermarry 

with  the  Spaniards There  can  be  little  doubt  that  they  are  a  remnant  of  those 

Goths  who  sided  with  the  Moors  on  their  invasion  of  Spain It  is  evident  that  their 

blood  has  at  no  time  mingled  with  that  of  the  wild  children  of  the  desert :  for  scarcely 
amongst  the  hills  of  Norway  would  you  find  figures  and  faces  more  essentially  Gothic  than 
those  of  the  Maragatos.  They  are  strong  athletic  men,  but  loutish  and  heavy,  and  their 
features,  though  for  the  most  part  well  formed,  are  vacant  and  devoid  of  expression.  They 
are  slow  and  plain  of  speech,  and  those  eloquent  and  imaginative  sallies,  so  common  in  the 
conversation  of  other  Spaniards,  seldom  or  never  escape  them;  they  have,  moreover,  a 
coarse,  thick  pronunciation,  and  when  you  hear  them  speak,  you  almost  imagine  that  it  is 
some  German  or  English  peasant  attempting  to  express  himself  in  the  language  of  the 
Peninsula."100  True  to  their  Gothic  character,  they  have  managed  to  monopolize  almost 
the  entire  commerce  of  one-half  of  Spain.  They  thus  accumulate  great  wealth,  and  arc 
much  better  fed  than  the  parsimonious  Spaniard.  Like  men  of  a  more  northern  clime,  they 
are  fond  of  spirituous  liquors  and  rich  meats. 

97  The  Zincali ;  or,  An  Account  of  the  Gypsies  of  Spain.  By  Geo.  Borrow.  New  York, 
1851,  p.  8. 

38  Races  of  Men.     U.  S.  Exploring  Expedition,  vol.  IX., 1848,  p.  345. 

W  Personal  Narrative.  i°°  Bible  in  Spain,  Chap.  XXIII. 


248  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

In  another  place,  Borrow  tells  us  that  in  the  heart  of  Spain,  he 
came  across  two  villages  — Villa  Seca  and  Vargas  —  the  respective 
inhabitants  of  which  entertained  for  each  other  a  deeply-rooted  hos- 
tility—  rarely  speaking  when  they  met,  and  never  intermarrying. 
The  people  of  Vargas  —  according  to  tradition,  "  Old  Christians," — 
are  light  and  fair ;  those  of  Villa  Seca — of  Moorish  origin — are  par- 
ticularly dark  complexioned.101  Many  examples  similar  to  this  can 
he  pointed  out,  where  a  mountain  ridge,  a  valley,  or  a  narrow  stream 
forms  the  only  dividing  line  between  races  who  differ  from  each  other 
in  language,  religion,  customs,  physical  and  mental  qualities,  &c. 
This  is  particularly  seen,  according  to  Hamilton  Smith,  in  the  Keel- 
gherries,  the  Crimea,  the  Carpathians,  the  Pyrenees,  the  Alps,  the 
Atlas,  and  even  in  the  group  of  Northern  South  America.102 

"The  Vincentine  district,"  says  a  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  "is,  as  every  one 
knows,  and  has  been  for  ages,  an  integral  part  of  the  Venetian  dominions,  professing  the 
same  religion,  and  governed  by  the  same  laws,  as  the  other  continental  provinces  of  Venice ; 
yet  the  English  character  is  not  more  different  from  the  French,  than  that  of  the  Vincentine 
from  the  Paduan ;  while  the  contrast  between  the  Vincentine  and  his  other  neighbor,  the 
Veronese,  is  hardly  less  remarkable."103 

In  a  letter,  dated  United  States  Steamer  John  Hancock,  Puget 
Sound,  July  1st,  1856,  and  recently  received  from  my  friend  and 
former  school-mate,  Dr.  T.  J.  Turner,  U.  S.K,  I  find  the  following 
paragraph,  which  bears  upon  the  subject  under  consideration :  "  On 
each  side  of  the  Straits  of  Juan  de  Fuca  live  very  different  tribes, 
and  although  the  Straits  are,  on  an  average,  about  sixty  miles  wide, 
yet  they  are  crossed  and  re-crossed  again  and  again  by  canoes,  and 
no  admixtures  of  the  varieties  (races  ?)  has  taken  place." 

Among  other  instances  of  the  persistence  of  human  cranial  forms, 
Dr.  Nott  figures,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  two  heads  —  an  ancient 
Asiatic  (probably  a  mountaineer  of  the  Taurus  chain),  and  a  modern 
Kurd  —  which  strongly  resemble  each  other,  though  separated  per- 
haps by  centuries  of  time.  A  still  better  example  of  this  perma- 
nence of  type,  and  one  which  involves  several  peculiar  and  novel 
reflections  as  to  the  relation  of  the  Scythse  to  the  modern  Suomi  or 
Finns,  and  through  these  latter  to  the  Caucasian,  or  Indo-Germanic 
forms  in  general,  is  found  in  the  fact  that  the  skull  of  a  Tchude, 
"  taken  from  one  of  the  very  ancient  burial-places  which  are  found 
near  the  workings  of  old  mines  in  the  mountainous  parts  of  Siberia," 
and  figured  by  Blumenbach,  is  exactly  represented  in  Morton's  col- 
lection by  several  modern  Finnic  heads. 

™  Op.  cit.,  chap.  XLIII.  102  Op.  cit.,  p.  174.  "«  No.  84,  p.  459. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF    MEN.  249 


"Plerasque  nationes  peculiare  quid  in  capitis  forma  sibi  vindicare  con- 
stat."— Vesalius,  De  Corpor.  Human.  Fab. 

"Of  all  the  peculiarities  in  the  form  of  the  bony  fabric,  those  of  the  skull 
are  the  most  striking  and  distinguishing.  It  is  in  the  head  that  we  find  the 
varieties  most  strongly  characteristic  of  different  races." 

Prichard,  Researches,  I.  275. 

One  of  the  most  difficult  problems  in  the  whole  range  of  cranio- 
scopy,  is  a  systematic  and  accurate  classification  of  cranial  forms. 
The  fewer  the  groups  attempted  to  be  made,  the  greater  the  diffi- 
culty ;  since  the  gradation  from  one  group  to  another  is  so  insensible, 
as  already  intimated,  that  it  is  exceedingly  perplexing  to  draw  sharp 
and  exact  lines  of  demarcation  between  them.  A  moment's  reflection 
will  show  that  a  comprehensive  group  must  necessarily  embrace  many 
skulls  which,  though  possessing  in  common  certain  features  by  which 
they  are  distinguished  from  those  of  other  groups,  will  differ  from 
each  other,  nevertheless,  in  as  many  minor  but  none  the  less  pecu- 
liar characters.  The  difficulty  is  increased  by  the  utter  impossibility 
of  pronouncing  positively  whether  the  varieties  thus  observed  are 
coeval  in  point  of  time,  as  the  "  original  diversity"  doctrine  main- 
tains; whether  they  are  simply  so  many  "developments"  the  one 
from  the  other,  as  the  advocates  of  the  Lamarkian  system  aver ;  or, 
finally,  whether,  as  the  supporters  of  the  "  unity"  dogma  contend, 
they  are  all  simple  modifications  of  one  primary  type  or  specific 
form.  Again,  as  each  group  or  family  of  man  consists  of  a  number 
of  races,  and  these,  in  turn,  are  made  up  of  varieties  and  sub-varieties, 
in  some  instances  almost  innumerable,  it  will  be  evident  that  a  true 
classification  can  only  result  from  the  careful  study  of  a  collection  of 
crania  so  vast  as  to  contain  not  only  many  individual  representations 
of  these  races,  varieties,  &c,  but  also  specimens  illustrative  of  both 
the  naturally  divergent  and  hybrid  forms.  And  here  another  obstacle 
presents  itself.  As  a  type  is  the  ideal  embodiment  of  a  series  of  allied 
objects,  and  as  the  perfection  of  this  type  depends  upon  the  number 
of  the  objects  upon  which  it  is  based,  the  very  necessity  of  a  large 
number  renders  it  no  easy  matter  to  determine  what  is  typical  and 
what  is  not;  or,  in  other  words,  what  are  the  respective  values  of  the 
different  characters  presented  by  a  skull. 

It  has  not  yet  been  determined  how  far  the  physical  identity  of  the 
individuals  composing  a  nation  is  a  proof  of  purity  of  race  and  the 
homogeneity  of  the  nation.  Neither  is  the  law  demonstrated,  in 
obedience  to  which  individual  dissimilarities  are  produced  by  inter- 


250  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

mixtures  of  allied  races.  The  first  effect  of  such  intermixture  is  to 
disorder  the  homogeneity  of  type  by  the  introduction  of  divergent 
forms.  If  the  influx  of  the  foreign  element  is  suddenly  arrested, 
these  abnormal  or  accidental  forms  are  absorbed  into  the  primary 
type.  If  the  introduction  is  continued  over  a  long  period,  the  homo- 
geneous aspect  of  the  nation  is  destroyed,  and  the  physical  characters 
of  the  primary  stock,  together  with  those  of  the  disturbing  element, 
disappear,  as  the  fusion  proceeds  to  give  rise  to  a  hybrid  race  blend- 
ing the  characters  of  both,  and  assuming  a  homogeneousness  of  its 
own,  which,  if  the  fusion  were  perfect,  would  very  likely  lead  to  the 
supposition  of  its  being  a  pure  form,  especially  if  the  history  of  these 
changes  was  not  made  known.  A  cranioscopist  having  the  skulls  of 
such  a  people  in  his  cabinet,  together  with  specimens  of  those  of  the 
primary  stocks  from  which  it  sprung,  could  easily  assign  it  a  place 
in  classification,  between  the  other  two,  but  would  be  puzzled  not  a 
little  to  determine  whether  it  was  a  primary  or  secondary  form,  a 
pure  race  or  uot.  A  resort  to  history  would  here  be  necessary,  just 
as  it  is  with  the  naturalist.  As  the  latter,  by  studying  the  anatomi- 
cal peculiarities  of  an  animal  in  conjunction  with  its  history,  esta- 
blishes its  primordial  character  and  durability,  so  the  ethnographer, 
ascertaining  the  osteologic  differentiae  of  the  races  of  men,  and  con- 
trasting them  with  the  records  of  remote,  historic  times,  is  enabled 
to  point  out  the  durability  of  certain  types  through  all  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  time  and  place.  In  this  way,  alone,  can  he  discriminate 
primary  typical  forms  from  secondary  or  hybrid  —  a  pure  race  from 
a  mixed  breed. 

The  thoroughness  of  the  fusion,  and  the  time  required  to  effect  it, 
will  depend  very  much  upon  the  degree  of  difference  between  the 
parent  stocks,  and  upon  the  relative  numbers  which  are  brought 
into  contact.  The  more  closely  allied  the  groups,  the  more  likely 
are  they  to  fuse  completely;  the  more  widely  separated,  the  less 
likelihood  is  there  of  a  perfect  intermixture. 

"  The  amalgamation  of  races,  there  are  strong  reasons  for  believing,  depends  chiefly  on 
their  original  proximity — their  likeness  from  the  beginning.  Where  races  are  remote,  their 
hybrid  products  are  weak,  infertile,  short-lived,  prone  to  disease,  and  perishable.  Where 
they  are  primitively  nearer  in  resemblance,  there  is  still  an  inherent  law  operating  and 
controlling  their  intermixture,  by  which  the  predominant  blood  overcomes  that  which  is  in 
minor  proportion,  and  causes  the  offspring  ultimately  to  revert  to  that  side  from  which  it 
was  chiefly  derived.  As  it  is  only  where  the  resemblance  of  races  is  most  intimate  that 
moral  antagonisms  can  be  largely  overcome,  so  it  is  in  these  cases  alone  that  we  may  expect 
to  meet  with  the  physical  attraction  productive  of  perfect  amalgamation ;  nature,  probably, 
still,  at  times,  evincing  her  unsubdued  resistance  by  the  occurrence  of  families  bearing  the 
impress  of  one  or  the  other  of  their  original  progenitors."104 

104  Crania  Britannica,  p.  8. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  251 

The  aboriginal  tribes  of  Australia  are  among  tbe  lowest  specimens 
of  humanity  —  the  farthest  removed  from  tbe  European.  Now,  ac- 
cording to  Strzelecki,  tbe  women  of  tbese  tribes  are  incapacitated 
from  reproducing  with  males  of  tbeir  own  race,  after  they  have  once 
been  impregnated  by  a  European.105  Dr.  Thompson,  however,  ex- 
presses bis  doubt  of  this  statement,  and  denies  its  truth  with  regard 
to  the  New  Zealand  women.106 

"  II  est  remarquable  que,  quoiqu'un  grand  nombre  d'Europe'ens  habitent  maintenant  dans 
les  memes  contre'es  que  les  Andanienes,  on  ne  mentionne  pas  encore  P  existence  d'hybrides 
resultant  de  leur  union.  Cette  circonstance  est  peut-gtre  due  a  ce  que  la  difference  entre 
ces  deux  extremities  de  la  s^rie  humaine  rend  plus  difficile  la  procreation  des  hybrides."107 

Here,  then,  are  the  elements  of  a  theory,  or  rather  the  indications 
of  an  unknown  physiological  law,  whose  importance  is  self-evident, 
and  whose  elucidation  connects  itself  with  an  allied  series  of  pheno- 
mena. I  allude  to  the  instances  in  which  the  progeny  of  the  female 
by  a  second  husband  resemble  the  first  husband  in  physical  appear- 
ance, temperament,  constitutional  disease,  &c. 

From  the  above  remarks,  it  will  be  readily  inferred  that  every 
additional  foreign  element  introduced  into  a  nation  will  only  serve 
to  render  a  thorough  fusion  more  and  more  difficult.  Indeed,  an 
almost  incalculable  time  would  be  required  to  bring  the  blending 
stocks  into  equilibrium,  and  thus  cause  to  disappear  the  innumerable 
hybrid  forms  or  pseudo-types.  As  long  as  tbe  blood  of  one  citizen 
of  such  a  nation  differed  in  the  degree  of  its  mixture  from  that  of 
another,  diverse  and  probably  long-forgotten  forms  would  crop  out 
in  tbe  most  unaccountable  manner,  as  indications  of  the  past,  and 
obstacles  to  the  assumption  of  that  perfectly  homogeneous  character 
which  belongs  to  the  pure  stocks  alone.  To  be  assured  of  the  truth 
of  these  propositions,  we  have  but  to  examine  with  care  the  popula- 
tion of  any  large  commercial  city,  as  London,  Constantinople,  Cadiz, 
Sew  York,  &c. 

If,  now,  it  be  true,  as  Count  de  Gobineau  maintains,  in  bis  philo- 
sophical inquiry  into  the  Cause  of  National  Degeneracy,  that  a  nation 
lives  and  flourishes  only  so  long  as  the  progressive  and  leading  eth- 
nical element  or  principle,  upon  which  it  is  based,  is  preserved  in  a 
vigorous  state,  and  that  the  exhaustion  of  this  principle  is  invariably 
accompanied  with  political  death,  then  should  the  American  states- 
man turn  aside  from  the  vapid  and  mischievous  party-questions  of 
the  day — questions  whose  very  littleness  should  permit  them  to  pass 

105  physical  Description  of  New  South  Wales  and  Van  Diemen's  Land,  London,  1845. 

106  British  and  Foreign  Medico-Chirurgical  Review  for  April,  1855. 

107  Des  Races  Humaines,  ou  Elements  d'Ethnographie.  Par  J.  J.  D'Omalius  D'Halloy. 
Paris,  1845,  p.  186. 


252  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

unheeded — and  earnestly  compare  the  historical  phases  of  our  youth- 
ful Republic  with  those  of  the  fallen  Greek  and  Roman  empires,  and 
the  already  enfeebled  English  Commonwealth,  that  he  may  learn 
those  unalterable  laws  of  political  reproduction,  evolution,  and  decay, 
and  thus,  forewarned,  provide  intelligently  for  the  amelioration  of 
that  disease  whose  seeds  were  planted  when  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence was  proclaimed,  and  whose  deadly  influences  threaten, 
sooner  or  later,  like  the  Lianes  of  a  tropical  forest,  to  suffocate  the 
national  tree  over  which  they  are  silently  spreading. 

Though  war  and  slavery,  those  powerful  agents  in  amalgamation, 
have  been  going  on,  without  interruption,  from  the  earliest  recorded 
history  of  our  race  down  to  the  present  moment,  yet  certain  primary 
types  have  maintained  themselves,  amidst  every  conflict,  and  under 
the  most  destructive  influences,  as  vestiges  or  wrecks  of  the  remotest 
times,  and  in  virtue  of  a  certain  inherent  and  mutual  antipathy,  as 
old  as  the  oldest  varieties  of  our  race.  The  instability  of  human 
hybrids  is  as  remarkable  as  the  permanency  of  the  pure  stocks.  The 
area  of  the  hybrid  forms  is  in  all  cases  limited,  and  their  existence 
devoid  of  a  self-sustaining  power.  "Where  the  mixed  races  are  sub- 
jected to  a  modified  climatic  influence,  they  for  a  while  appear  to 
maintain  themselves,  and  even  extend  their  locality  beyond  their 
primary  centres  of  creation ;  but,  sooner  or  later,  they  disappear, 
either  through  extermination,  or  absorption  by  the  purer  races,  or  in 
consequence  of  a  mysterious  degradation  of  vital  energy.  Neverthe- 
less, long  after  their  obliteration,  they  leave  their  impress  upon  the 
conquering  and  exterminating  races,  in  the  shape  of  modifications 
of  the  skull,  stature,  habits,  intellectual  conditions,  &c.  In  this  in- 
stability, this  inherent  tendency  to  decay,  we  discover  the  great  cheek 
to  the  assumption  by  the  hybrid  types  of  that  homogeneity  which,  in 
all  probability,  once  characterized  the  primeval  groups  of  man. 

"As  it  is  with  individual  life,  so  families,  tribes,  and  nations,  most  likely  even  races, 
pass  away.  In  debatable  regions,  their  tenure  is  only  provisional,  until  the  typical  form 
appears,  when  they  are  extinguished,  or  found  to  abandon  all  open  territories,  not  positively 
assigned  them  by  nature,  to  make  room  for  those  to  whom  they  are  genial.  This  effect  is 
itself  a  criterion  of  an  abnormal  origin ;  for  a  parent  stock,  a  typical  form  of  the  present 
genus  or  species,  perhaps  with  the  sole  exception  of  the  now  extinct  Flatheads,  is,  we  be- 
lieve, indestructible  and  ineffaceable.  No  change  of  food  or  circumstances  can  sweep  away 
the  tropical,  woolly-haired  man ;  no  event,  short  of  a  general  cataclycis,  can  transfer  his 
centre  of  existence  to  another ;  nor  can  any  known  cause  dislodge  the  beardless  type  from 
the  primeval  high  North-Eastern  region  of  Asia  and  its  icy  shores.  The  white  or  bearded 
form,  particularly  that  section  which  has  little  or  no  admixture,  and  is  therefore  quite  fair, 
can  only  live,  not  thrive,  in  the  two  extremes  of  temperature.  It  exists  in  them  solely  as 
a  master  race,  and  must  be  maintained  therein  by  foreign  influences ;  and  the  intermediate 
regions,  as  we  have  seen,  were  in  part  yielded  to  the  Mongolic  on  one  side,  and  but  tempo- 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  253 

rarily  obtained,  by  extermination  from  the  woolly-haired,  on  the  other."103  Hybrid  forms 
cannot  be  regarded  as  characteristic  of  a  new  race ;  amidst  all  the  confusion  of  blood,  "we 
look  in  vain  for  a  new  race.  Nature  asserts  her  dominion  on  all  hands  in  a  deterioration 
and  degradation,  the  fatal  and  depopulating  consequences  of  which  it  is  appalling  to  con- 
template." 109 

To  the  cranioscopist,  the  most  interesting  point,  perhaps,  in  this 
whole  inquiry,  is  the  determination  of  the  particular  influence  exerted 
by  each  parent  stock  upon  the  formation  of  the  hybrid  cranium. 
So  much  obscurity  surrounds  this  question,  however,  and  the  facts 
concerning  it  are  so  scanty  and  conflicting,  that  I  am  compelled  to 
forego  its  discussion  in  this  place,  and  refer  the  reader  to  the  writings 
of  "Walker  [Intermarriage  ;  or,  Beauty,  Health,  and  Intellect);  Combe 
[The  Constitution  of  Man);  Blaine  {Outlines  of  the  Veterinary  Art); 
Edwards  (Des  Caracteres Physiologiques  des  Races  Surnames))  Harvey 
{Monthly  Journal  of  Medical  Science,  Aug.  1854);  Berard  (Cours  de 
Physiologic)  ;  and  particularly,  Lucas  (Traite  Philosophique  et  Physio- 
logique  de  V Seredite  Naturelle). 

As  already  intimated,  the  attempted  classifications  of  the  human 
family  are  as  numerous  as  they  are  various.  Those  based  upon  the 
form  of  the  skull  are  perhaps  the  most  reliable,  since  the  skull  is 
intimately  connected  with  the  intellectual  organs,  and  resists,  in  a 
remarkable  manner,  the  altering  influences  of  climate.  Among 
others,  the  most  simple,  though  in  some  respects  objectionable,  is  that 
of  Prof.  Retzius,  who,  in  an  essay  upon  the  cranial  forms  of  Northern 
Europe,'10  divides  all  heads  into  Long  (Dolichocephalce)  and  Short 
{Brachycephalcp).  Each  of  these  he  again  subdivides  into  Straight- 
Jaws  (Orthognathy)  and  Prominent-Jaws  (Prognaihcc).  The  races 
comprised  in  each  of  these  divisions  are  seen  in  the  accompanying 
scheme. 

T      irl       ]   /  Straight  jaws     1  Celtic  and  Germanic  tribes. 

°  \  Prominent  jaws  J  Negroes,  Australians,  Oceanians,  Caribs,  Greenlanders,  &c. 

Short  heads  /  Straight  jaws      1  Laplanders,  Finns,  Sclaves,  Turks,  Persians,  &c. 
\  Prominent  jaws  /  Tartars,  Mongolians,  Malays,  Incas,  Papuas,  &c. 

Prof.  Zetjne,  after  animadverting  upon  what  he  calls  the  "  one-sided 
polarity"  of  this  classification,  adopts  three  main  forms  or  types  of 
skull  for  the  Eastern,  and  three  corresponding  types  for  the  "Western 
hemisphere,  thus  dividing  mankind  into  six  races,  as  is  shown  in  the 
subjoined  table : m 

108  Hamilton  Smith,  op.  cit.,  p.  175. 

109  Davis,  Cran.  Brit.,  p.  7. 

110  TJeber  die  Sch'adelformen  der  Nordbewohner.  —  Miiller's  Archives,  1845,  p.  84. 

111  tiber  Schiidelbildung,  pp.  19,  20. 


254  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

North. 
New  World.  Old  World. 

I.  High  Skull. 


4.  Apalachian,  1.  Caucasian, 

or  Natchez  Race.  or  Iran  Race. 

II.  Broad  Skull. 


5.  Guianian,  2.  Mongolian, 

or  Carib  Race.  or  Turan  Race. 

III.  Long  Skull. 


6.  Peruvian,  3.  Ethiopian, 

or  Inca  Race.  or  Sudan  Race. 

South. 

A  serious  objection  to  this  division  exists  in  the  fact  that  the  so- 
called  high  skulls,  in  many  important  features,  differ  as  much  from 
each  other,  as  they  do  from  the  broad  and  long  skulls,  and  this  is 
equally  predicable  of  each  of  these  last  two  varieties,  as  compared 
with  the  first.  Moreover,  the  requirements  of  science  discounte- 
nance all  attempts  at  the  indiscriminate  arrangement  of  artificially 
deformed  with  natural  skulls.  Prichard  divides  all  skulls  into 
1.  The  symmetrical  or  oval  form,  which  is  that  of  the  European  and 
Western  Asiatic  nations ;  2.  The  narrow  and  elongated  or  progna- 
thous skull,  of  which  the  most  strongly  marked  specimen  is  perhaps 
the  cranium  of  the  Negro  of  the  Gold  Coast;  3.  The  broad  and 
square-faced  or  pyramidal  skull,  which  is  that  particularly  of  the 
Turanian  nation.112 

"Want  of  space,  alone,  prevents  reference  to  other  systems.  How- 
ever, regarding  nature  as  an  harmonious  and  indivisible  whole,  and 
believing  with  the  venerable  Humboldt,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
recognize  any  typical  sharpness  of  definition  between  the  races ; 1I3 
and  with  the  eminent  German  physiologist,  Johannes  Muller,  that 
it  is  incontestably  more  desirable  to  contrast  the  races  by  their  con- 
stant and  extreme  forms ; lM  and  finally,  inclining  to  the  opinion  so 
ably  argued  by  Gerard,"5  and  entertained  by  Knox,116  and  others, 

112  Researches  into  the  Physical  History  of  Mankind.     London,  1836.     Vol.  I.  p.  281. 

113  Cosmos :  A  Sketch  of  a  Physical  Description  of  the  Universe.  By  Alexander  Von 
Humboldt.     Translated  from  the  German  by  E.  C.  Otte\     New  York,  1850.     Vol.  I.  p.  356. 

114  Handbuch  der  Physiologie  des  Menschen.     Bd.  II.,  s.  775. 

115  Dictionnaire  Universel  d'Histoire  Naturelle.  Dirige'  par  M.  Chas.  d'Orbigny.  Art. 
Espece,  par  Gerard ;  t.  5eme. 

i16  "In  time  there  is  probably  no  such  thing  as  species;  no  absolutely  new  creations 
ever  took  place ;  but  as  viewed  by  the  limited  mind  of  man,  the  question  takes  another 
aspect.  As  regards  his  individual  existence,  time  is  a  short  span ;  a  few  centuries,  or  a 
few  thousand  years,  more  or  less ;  this  is  all  he  can  grasp.  Now,  for  that  period  at  least, 
organic  forms  seem  not  to  have  changed.     So  far  back  as  history  goes,  the  species  of  ani- 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  255 

that  species  occupy  no  absolutely  permanent  place  in  nature's  method, 
and  that  all  specific  distinctions  are,  therefore,  fallacious  —  I  have 
deemed  it  more  judicious,  in  the  present  state  of  our  science,  to 
avoid  any  similar  attempt  at  a  classification,  preferring  to  lay  before 
the  general  reader  a  panoramic  view  of  a  few  of  the  almost  innu- 
merable cranial  forme  which  the  traveller  meets  with  in  making  a 
tour  of  the  surface  of  the  earth.     But,  in  order  to  avoid  miscon- 
ceptions, a  few  preliminary  remarks  will  be  necessary  before  pro- 
ceeding with  our  proposed  survey.     If,  to  facilitate  our  progress,  we 
divide  the  earth's  surface  into  several  regions  or  realms,  the  limits 
of  each  being  determined  by  the  geographical  distribution  of  its 
peculiar  organic  forms,  and  represent  each  by  a  cranial  form  selected 
from  among  its  most  numerous  and  apparently  indigenous  inhabi- 
tants, we  will  obtain  a  series  of  typical  or  standard  figures,  similar  to 
those  constituting  the  second  column  of  the  extensive  "Ethnographic 
Tableau"  accompanying  this  work.     With  one  exception,  the  crania 
figured  in  the  tableau  are  contained  in  the  Mortonian  collection. 
Taken  by  means  of  the  camera  lucida,  in  the  hands  of  the  accom- 
plished Mrs.  Gliddon,  I  can  vouch  for  the  general  accuracy  of  the 
drawings,  and  their  truthfulness  to  nature.     The  exception  alluded 
to  is  a  drawing  of  Schiller's  skull  (C),  borrowed  from  the  cranioscopic 
atlas  of  Carus.     Forced  by  the  arrangement  of  the  Tableau  to  repre- 
sent- the  entire  European  area  by  two  crania  instead  of  many,  I 
have  selected  the  above  figure  because  it  embraces  both  Gothic 
and  Sclavonic  characters,  and  may  be  taken  therefore  as  a  standard 
for  Central  and  Eastern  Europe  in  general ;  while  the  more  elongated 
Circassian  skull  (D)  may  be  regarded  as  a  not  inappropriate  repre- 
sentative of  Southern  and  South-eastern  Europe.     Now  it  is  quite 
evident  that  all   attempts   at  representing  the   skull-forms  of  the 
numerous  races  of  men  by  a  few  figures  (as  in  the  Tableau),  must 
necessarily  be  imperfect,  and  consequently  open  to  criticism.     I  wish 
the  reader,  therefore,  distinctly  to  understand  that  the  skulls  figured 
in  the  Tableau  are  merely  so  many  examples,  each  of  a  cranial  type, 
more  or  less  numerously  represented,  and  prevailing  over  a  greater 
or  less  extent  of  the  particular  geographical  area  to  which  it  belongs. 
Each  figure  represents  not  the  whole  realm  in  which  it  is  placed, 
but  one  only  of  the  characteristic  forms  of  that  realm.     The  Negro 
head  (E),  for  example,  is  not  the  standard  of  the  entire  African  con- 
tinent, but  a  peculiar  form  found  there,   and  nowhere  else.     To 
represent  the  whole  of  this  continent,  many  heads  would  be  required. 

mals,  as  we  call  them,  have  not  changed;  the  races  of  men  have  been  absolutely  the  same. 
They  were  distinct  then  for  that  period  as  at  present."  —  Races  of  Men,  p.  34. 


256  THE     CEAJSTIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

This  is  true  of  all  the  other  realms.  "With  each  of  the  nine  figures 
(except  that  from  Carus)  the  facial  angle  and  internal  capacity  have 
heen  given.  The  reader  will  observe,  and  perhaps  with  surprise, 
that  the  Eskimo  and  Kalmuck  heads  have  the  largest  internal 
capacity,  larger  even  than  the  European  skulls ;  while  the  Kal- 
muck possesses  also  the  highest  facial  angle.  Let  him  not  be 
misled,  however,  by  this  accidental  fact.  Eor  these  measurements 
in  this  instance  express  individual  peculiarities,  rather  than  race- 
characters.  Moreover,  the  heads  in  question  have  been  selected 
entirely  with  reference  to  their  external  osteological  characters. 
The  facial  angles  given  by  Morton  in  his  Catalogue  should  not 
be  relied  upon  too  implicitly,  since  they  have  been  taken  by  means 
of  an  instrument  which,  in  different,  but  equally  careful  hands, 
yields  different  results  for  the  same  head.  To  measure  the  facial 
angle  with  unerring  mathematical  precision,  an  accurate  photo- 
graphic outline  of  the  head  in  a  lateral  view  should  be  first  ob- 
tained ;  upon  this  figure  the  facial  and  horizontal  lines  of  Camper 
should  next  be  drawn,  and  the  angle  then  measured  with  a  finely 
graduated  protractor.  To  avoid  any  further  allusion  to  the  cranial 
capacity  of  the  different  races  of  men,  I  here  subjoin  the  two  fol- 
lowing tables,  taken  from  my  manuscript  copy  of  the  fourth  edition 
of  Morton's  Catalogue.  Table  I.  has  been  enlarged  from  that  given 
on  page  viii.  of  the  third  edition,  by  the  interpolation  of  forty  measure- 
ments, with  the  effect  of  increasing  the  mean  cranial  capacity  of  the 
Teutonic  Family,  the  Mongolian  and  American  Groups  by  1.5,  5, 
and  1.3  cubic  inches  respectively;  and  slightly  diminishing  that 
of  the  Negro  Group.  Table  II.  has  been  constructed  from  the 
measurements  recorded  in  different  parts  of  the  Catalogue. 
(The  letters  "I.  C."  mean  internal  capacity.) 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


257 


TABLE  I.  —  Showing  the  She  of  the  Brain  in  cubic  inches,  as  obtained  from  the  internal  mea- 
surement of  663  Crania  of  various  Races  and  Families  of  Man. 


RACES  AND  FAMILIES. 


Modern  Caucasian  Group. 
Teutonic  Family. 


Swedes 

Germans   1 
Prussians  / 


English  . 
Anglo-Americans  , 


True  Finns  . 


Tchudic  Family. 


Native  Irish  , 


Celtic  Family. 


Persians.. 
Armenians.. 
Circassians  . 


Pelasgic  Family. 


Arabs... 
Fellahs- 


Ayras.. 
Bengalees 


Semitic  Family. 

Nilotic  Family. 

Indosianic  Family. 


Ancient  Caucasian  Gkoup. 

Pelasgic  Family. 
Graeco-Egyptians , 

Nilotic  Family. 
_  Egyptians 


Mongolian  Group. 

Chinese  Family  

Hyperborean  Family 


Malay  Group. 

Malayan  Family 

Polynesian  Family 


Peruvians . 
Mexicans.. 


American  Group. 
Toltecan  Family. 


Barbarous  Tribes. 

Iroquois 

Lenape  

Cherokee , 

Shoshone\  &c 


Negro  Group. 

American-born  Negroes 

Native  African  Family 

Hottentot  Family 

Alforian  Family 

Australians 

Oceanic  Negroes 


no.  of 
skulls. 


11 


17 


5 

7 

9 

6 
10 

3 

18 

8 
25 

18 
55 

10 


20 
5 


152 
25 


164 


12 

64 

3 


LARGEST 
I.  C. 


SMALLEST 
I.  C. 


108.25 

114 

105 

97 

112.5 
97 
94 

98 

96 

91 
90 


97 
96 


98 
102 


97 
90.5 


101 
92 


104 


86 
99 
83 

83 
77 


65 

70 

91 
82 

81.5 

78 

75 

84 

66 

79 
67 

73 

68 


70 

78.75 


68 
82 


58 
67 


69 


73 
65 
68 

63 
76 


93 

95 

96 
90 

94.3 

87 
84 

89 

79 

86 
78 


87 

80 

85 


86 
84.3 


75.3 
81.7 


84 


80.8 
83.7 
75.3 

75 
76.5 


k93.5 


.81.7 


•87 


-85 


■  80.3 


82.25 


258 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


TABLE  II. 
Amebican  Crania. 


Barbarous  Tribes. 


North  Americans. 

Arickarees 

Assinaboins 

Chenouks 

Oregon  Tribes 

Cherokees 

Chetimaches 

Chippeways 

Cotonay 

Creeks 

Dacota 

Hurons 

Iroquois 

Lenape 

Lipans  

Mandans 

Menominees 

Miamis 

Minetaris 

Mohawks 

Narragansets 

Osage 

Otoes 

Ottawas 

Ottigamies . ... 

Pawnees 

Penobscot 

Pottawatomies 

Sauks 

S'eminoles 

Shawnees 

Shoshones 

Upsarookas 

Winnebagos 

Tamassees 

Californians 

Miscellaneous, , 
Mound,  Caves, 
Uncertain,  &c. 

Central  American. . . 

South  Americans. 

Araucanians 

Brazilians 

Charib 


11 


No.  of  Skulls 
measured. 


3 
4 
5 
4 
2 
2 
3 
4 
1 
4 
2 
4 
2 
7 
7 
5 
4 
3 
10 
2 

3 
4 
2 
2 
1 
3 
2 
13 
4 
4 
2 
2 
1 
1 

27 

1 

7 
3 

1 


Mean 
I.  0. 


76 

90 

79 

82 

88.7 

79.5 

91 

86 

88.7 

90 

81.5 

96 

79.5 

91.5 

83.5 

84 

86 

86.5 

84 

81 

82.5 

85.6 

81.7 

93.5 

74.5 

80 

91 

90.7 

84 

89.6 

80.7 

94 

89 

70 

87 

84.8 


91 

76 

73.6 

89 


Toltecan  Race. 


Peruvian  Family. 

Arica 

Pachacamac 

Pisco 

Santa 

Lima 

Miscellaneous 


Mexican  Family. 

Tlahuica 

Azteck 

Oturaba 

Tacuba  

Otomie 

Chechemecan 

Tlascalan 

Pames .. ...... 

Miscellaneous 

Modern  Mexicans.. 


No.  of  Skulls 
measured. 


14 

77 

44 

5 

5 

7 

1 
2 
3 
3 
5 
1 
1 
2 
4 


Mean\ 
I.  C. 


79 

74.9 

74 

78 

78 

75.5 


84 

80.5 

82.6 

81.6 

76.6 

83 

84 

79.5 

87 

82.6 


*^*  If  we  take  the  collective  races 
of  America,  civilized  and  savage,  we 
find  that  the  average  size  of  the  brain 
as  measured  in  the  whole  series  of  341 
skulls,  is  but  80.3  cubic  inches. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


259 


Upon  those  outstretched  desert  wastes  which  skirt  the  Icy  Sea  — 
the  frozen  tundras  of  Siberia,  and  the  barren  lands  of  America  — 
amidst  the  snowy  islands  and  everlasting  icebergs  of  the  Polar  Ocean 
itself,  the  human  family  presents  us  with  a  cranial  form  or  type,  to 
which  the  learned  Prichard  has  very  happily  applied  the  term  pyra- 
midal. Amongst  all  the  Hyperboreans,  whose  life  is  one  continued 
struggle  with  a  stern  and  rugged  nature,  the  central  and  far  northern 
Eskimos  present  us  with  the  most  strongly  marked  specimens  of  this 
type.  I  have  been  induced,  therefore,  to  select,  as  the  standard  or 
typical  representative  of  Arctic  Man,  a  well-characterized  Eskimo 
cranium,  procured  by  that  zealous  and  intrepid  navigator,  Dr.  E.  K. 
Kane,  during  his  first  voyage  to  the  North,  and  by  him  kindly  placed, 
along  with  three  other  specimens,  in  the  collection  of  our  Academy. 
Through  the  kindness  of  Dr.  I.  I.  Hayes  and  Dr.  J.  K.  Kane,  I  have 
been'  enabled  to  mature  my  studies  of  the  pyramidal  form  over  seven 
Eskimo  skulls  in  all,  a  detailed  account  of  which  I  hope  shortly  to 
be  able  to  present  to  the  ethnological  public  through  another  channel. 
The  following  brief  resume  of  the  characteristics  of  an  Eskimo  cra- 
nium will  serve  as  a  commentary  upon  the  accompanying  figures, 
which  represent  the  front  and  lateral  views  of  the  head  above  men- 
tioned (No.  1558  of  the  Mortonian  collection).     The  male  Eskimo 

Fig.  11. 


Fig.  10. 


Lateral  view  of  Cranium.  Front  view  of  same. 

Eskimo. 
(  From  Dr.  Kane's  First  Arctic  Voyage.  ) 

skull  is  large,  long,  narrow,  pyramidal ;  greatest  breadth  near  the 
base;  sagittal  suture  prominent  and  keel-like,  in  consequence  of  the 
angular  junction  of  the  parietal  and  two  halves  of  the  frontal  bones  ; 
proportion  between  length  of  head  and  height  of  face  as  7  to  5 ; 
proportion  between  cranial  and  facial  halves  of  the  occipito-mental 
diameter  as  4J  to  5 ;  attachment  for  the  temporal  muscle  large ; 
zygomatic  fossse  deep  and  capacious ;  mastoid  processes  thick  and 


2G0 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


prominent;  glenoid  cavity  capacious,  and  adapted  to  considerable 
lateral  motion  of  the  condyles ;  forehead  flat  and  receding ;  occiput 
full  and  salient ;  face  broad  and  lozenge-shaped,  the  greatest  breadth 
being  just  below  the  orbits ;  malar  bones  broad,  high,  and  promi- 
nent, the  external  surface  looking  antero-laterally  ;  orbits  large  and 
straight ;  zygomatic  arches  massive  and  widely  separated ;  length  of 
the  face  one  inch  less  than  the  breadth ;  nasal  bones  flat,  narrow,  and 
united  at  an  obtuse  angle,  sometimes  lying  in  the  same  plane  as  the 
naso-maxillary  processes ;  superior  maxilla  massive  and  prognathous, 
its  anterior  surface  flat  and  smooth ;  superior  alveolar  margin  oval ; 
inferior  margin  of  anterior  nares  flat,  smooth,  inclining  forwards  and 
downwards ;  inferior  maxilla  large,  long,  and  triangular ;  semi-lunar 
notch  quite  shallow ;  angles  of  the  jaw  flared  out,  and  chin  promi- 
nent ;  teeth  large,  and  worn  in  such  a  manner  as  to  present,  in  the 
upper  jaw,  an  inclination  from  without  inwards,  upwards,  and  late- 
rally, and  in  the  lower  jaw,  just  the  reverse ;  antero-posterior  diameter 
of  cuspids  greater  than  the  transverse ;  configuration  of  the  basis 
cranii  triangular,  with  the  base  of  the  triangle  forward  between  the 
zygomse,  the  truncated  apex  looking  posteriorly ;  breadth  of  base 
about  one-half  tLe  length ;  shape  of  foramen  magnum  an  irregular 
oval ;  anterior  margin  of  foramen  magnum  on  a  line  with  the  poste- 
rior edge  of  the  external  meati.117 

The  female  cranium  differs  from  the  male  in  being  smaller,  lighter, 
and  presenting  a  smoother  surface  and  more  delicate  structure.  The 
malar  bones  are  less  massive,  the  face  not  quite  so  broad,  and  the 
anterior  surface  of  the  superior  maxilla  concave  rather  than  flat. 

With  very  slight  and  insigni- 
ficant variations,  this  type  pre- 
vails along  the  whole  American 
coast  north  of  the  60th  parallel, 
and  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
to  Bhering's  Straits,  ranging 
through  140°  of  longitude,  or 
over  a  tract  of  some  3500  miles. 
ISTor  does  it  altogether  stop 
here,  as  is  shown  in  the  accom- 
panying figure  of  a  Tchuktchi 
skull — one  of  three,  brought  by 
Mr.  E.  M.  Kern  from  the  Island 
Arakamtchetchem,  or  Kayne, 
at  Glassnappe  Harbor,  Lat.  64° 


Fig.  12. 


TCHDKTCHI. 

(N.  Pacific  Explor.  Exp.,  U.  S.  Corvette  "  Vin- 
cennes,"  under  Capt.  Rodgers,  V.  S.  N.,  1856.) 


u'  From  my  unpublished  "  Descriptions  and  Delineations  of  Skulls  in  the  Mortonian  Col- 
lection." 


OF     THE     RACES    OP    MEN.  261 

40'  1ST.,  Long.  172°  59'  "W.  of  Greenwich — and  by  him  kindly  loaned 
to  me  for  examination  and  study.  The  above  island  forms  part  of 
the  western  bank  of  Bhering's  Straits.  "  The  name  of  the  village," 
writes  Mr.  Keen,  "  to  which  the  burial-place  belonged,  whence  the 

skulls  were  procured,  is  Yergnynne In  stature,  the  (Tchuktchi) 

men  are  of  good  height,  well  built  and  active.  The  women  are 
generally  small,  well  made,  and  have  exceedingly  pretty  hands  and 
feet.  Their  mouths  are  generally  large ;  the  upper  lip  is  full  and 
projecting,  and  the  eyes  long  and  narrow."118 

Leaving  the  Koriaks,  and  travelling  southward,  we  next  encounter 
the  Kamschatkans,  a  once  numerous,  though  now  scanty  and  mise- 
rable race,  occupying  chiefly  the  southern  portion  of  the  peninsula 
which  bears  their  name.  It  has  been  observed  that  this  people, 
though  presenting  most  of  the  physical  characters  common  to  the 
Polar  tribes,  are  not  strictly  identical  with  the  latter,  as  is  shown  in 
their  moral  and  intellectual  character.  Stoller  was  led  by  their 
physical  traits  to  class  them  among  the  Mongolians,  while  Prichard 
speaks  of  them  as  "  a  distinct  race,  divided  into  four  tribes,  who 
scarcely  understand  each  other."119  Dr.  Morton  appears  to  consider 
them  as  a  hybrid  people.  "  It  must  be  admitted,"  says  he,  "  that  the 
southern  Kamskatkans,  in  common  with  the  southern  tribes  of  Tun- 
gusians  and  Ostiaks,  have  so  long  mixed  with  the  proximate  Mongol- 
Tartar  hordes,  that  it  is,  in  some  measure,  arbitrary  to  class  them 
definitively  with  either  family,  for  their  characters  are  obviously  de- 
rived from  both."  12°  An  attentive  study  of  the  cast  of  a  Kamtskatkan 
cranium  (ISTo.  725  of  the  Mortonian  collection),  and  comparison  with 
Plate  LXH.  of  Blumenbach's  Decades,  leave  little  doubt  in  my  mind 
of  a  sensible  departure  from  the  pyramidal  type  which  predominates 
to  the  north.  The  cast  in  question  was  presented  to  Dr.  Morton  by 
Dr.  0.  S.  Fowler.  It  is  long  and  flat,  and  presents  quite  a  different 
proportion  between  the  bi-temporal,  longitudinal,  and  vertical  dia- 
meters from  what  we  find  in  the  heads  of  the  true  Hyperboreans.  The 
low,  flat,  and  smooth  forehead  is  devoid  of  the  keel-like  formation 
perceptible  in  the  Eskimo.  The  carinated  ridge  makes  its  appear- 
ance along  the  middle  and  posterior  part  of  the  inter-parietal  suture. 
The  widest  transverse  diameter  is  near  the  superior  edge  of  the  tem- 
poral bone ;  from  this  point  the  diameter  contracts  both  above  and 
below.  As  in  the  Eskimo,  the  occiput  is  full  and  prominent,  as  is 
also  the  posterior  surface  of  the  parietal  bones,  which  surface,  in  the 
Eskimo,  however,  is  flat.     The  forehead  inclines  upwards  and  back- 

118  Letter  to  Mr.  Geo.  R.  Gliddon,  dated  Washington,  Oct.  16th,  1856. 
"»  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  3d  Edition,  p.  223. 
120  Crania  Americana,  p.  52. 


262  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

wards  to  a  prominence  in  the  middle  of  the  inter-parietal  suture, 
from  which  point  it  is  rounded  off  posteriorly.  The  face  forms  a 
broad  oval ;  the  orbits  are  large,  deep,  and  have  their  transverse  axes 
at  right  angles  with  the  median  line  of  the  face.  The  malar  bones, 
though  large,  are  neither  so  prominent  nor  high  as  in  the  Eskimo. 
They  are  laterally  compressed,  more  rounded,  and  less  flared  out  at 
their  inferior  margin  than  in  the  Polar  man.  The  anterior  nares  are 
flat  and  smooth,  and  the  alveolar  arch  somewhat  more  prominent 
than  in  the  typical  Eskimo,  as  is  shown  by  comparing  them  by  the 
norma  verticalis.  Upon  examining  the  basis  cranii,  we  observe,  at 
once,  the  globular  fulness  of  the  occipital  region,  and  an  alteration 
in  the  general  configuration  of  the  base,  as  compared  with  that  of 
our  Arctic  standard.  The  greatest  breadth  is  not  confined  to  the 
zygomatic  region,  for  lines  drawn  from  the  most  prominent  point  of 
the  zygomse  to  the  most  prominent  point  of  the  mastoid  process,  on 
either  side,  are  parallel  to  each  other.  Did  space  permit,  other  dis- 
tinctions could  readily  be  pointed  out. 

From  this  description,  coupled  with  the  foregoing  statements,  it 
will  be  seen  that  the  Kamtskatkans  are  either  a  distinct  people,  occu- 
pying the  gap  or  transitionary  ground  between  the  Polar  tribes  and 
the  Mongols ;  or,  they  are  the  hybrid  results  of  an  intermixture  of 
these  two  great  groups ;  or,  finally,  and  to  this  opinion  I  incline,  they 
constitute  the  greatest  divergency  of  which  the  true  Arctic  type  is 
capable.  The  cast  above  described  being  that  of  a  female,  and  the 
only  one,  moreover,  to  which  I  can  obtain  access,  I  am  unable  to 
arrive  at  any  more  definite  conclusion. 

Of  the  skulls  of  the  Yukagiri,  an  obscure  and  very  little  known 
race,  dwelling  to  the  westward  of  the  Koriaks,  Morton's  collection, 
unfortunately,  contains  not  a  single  specimen ;  nor  can  I  find  draw- 
ings of  them  in  any  of  the  many  works  which  I  have  consulted. 
According  to  Prichard,  as  a  pure  race  they  are  now  all  extinct,  having 
been  exterminated  in  their  wars  with  the  Tchuktchi  and  Koriaks.121 

Extending  along  the  cheerless  banks  of  the  Lena,  from  the  borders 
of  the  Frozen  Ocean  as  far  south  as  Alden,  and  occupying  the  country 
between  the  Kolyma  and  Yennisei,  we  find  the  Yakuts,  or  "  isolated 
Turks,"  as  Latham  styles  them,  a  people  who,  although  surrounded 
by  Hyperboreans,  contrast  remarkably  with  the  latter  in  language, 
civilization,  and  physical  conformation.  These  people  constitute  an 
interesting  study  for  the  cranioscopist.  They  are  described  as  a  pas- 
toral race,  of  industrious  and  accumulative  habits,  and  manifesting 
a  higher  degree  of  civilization  than  their  ichthyophagous  Tungusian 
and  Yukagyrian  neighbors.     In  consonance  with  this  higher  condi- 

i21  Op.  cit,  p.  223. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  263 

tion,  the  skull,  as  shown  in  Tab.  XV.  of  the  Decades,  differs  decidedly 
from  the  prevailing  pyramidal  form  of  this  region.  The  reader  will 
at  once  observe,  upon  referring  to  that  table,  the  nearly  square  con- 
tour of  the  head,  approximating  the  Mongolian  type,  presently  to  be 
represented,  the  large  and  widely  separated  orbits,  the  full  and  pro- 
minent glabella,  the  ossa  nasi  narrow  and  curving  to  a  point  above, 
and  the  parietal  bones  projecting  laterally.  The  descriptions  given 
by  Gmelin  and  Erman  of  the  Yakuts  are,  to  some  extent,  confirma- 
tory of  the  characters  above  indicated. 

The  present  remarkable  locality  of  the  Yakuts  is  undoubtedly  not 
their  original  home.  Their  language  is  Turkish  —  intelligible  in 
Constantinople  —  and  their  traditions,  unlike  those  of  their  Arctic 
neighbors,  point  to  the  South.  They  afford  a  singular  example  of  "  a 
weak  section  of  the  human  race  pressed  into  an  inhospitable  climate 
by  a  stronger  one."122  Difficulties  of  classification  have  been  raised 
upon  certain  slight  physical  resemblances  between  the  Yakuts  and 
the  surrounding  tribes.  These  resemblances  may  be  regarded  as  the 
indirect  results  of  the  great  Mongolic  expansion,  which,  while  it 
crowded  the  main  body  of  the  Turkish  population  to  the  South, 
allowed  a  small  portion  to  escape  to  the  North-East,  in  the  inhospi- 
table region  of  the  Lena,  where,  intermarriage,  to  some  extent,  soon 
followed.  We  may  readily  suppose  that,  in  consequence  of  the 
numerical  predominance  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  these  re- 
gions over  the  new  comers,  the  intermixture  resulted  in  the  latter 
assuming,  to  a  certain  extent,  some  of  the  physical  characters  of  the 
former.  But  the  language  of  the  Yakuts,  being  more  perfect  than 
that  of  the  Indigense,  has  maintained  its  supremacy. 

Upon  the  mountainous  tract,  comprised  between  the  Yennesei 
River  and  the  Okhotsk  Sea  in  one  direction,  and  the  Arctic  Ocean 
and  Alden  Mountains  in  the  other,  we  encounter  an  interesting 
people,  represented  by  the  Tongus  in  the  North  and  the  Lamutes  in 
the  East.  They  possess  a  peculiar  language,  and,  anterior  to  the 
sixteenth  century,  appear  to  have  been  a  powerful  race.  In  his 
physical  description  of  the  Tungusians,  Pallas  says  that  their  faces 
are  flatter  and  broader  than  the  Mongolian,  and  more  allied  to  the 
Samoiedes,  who  lie  to  the  west  of  them.123  In  his  Table  XVI.,  Blu- 
menbach  represents  the  cranium  of  a  Northern  or  Reindeer  Tungus. 
Though  the  characteristic  breadth  of  face  below  the  eyes  is  preserved, 
and  with  it,  thereby,  the  lozenge-shaped  face,  yet  Jhe  general  form 
of  the  head  has  undergone  some  modification.  Blumenbach  very 
briefly  describes  this  head  in  the  following  terms : 

122  Latham,  Varieties  of  Man,  p.  95. 

123  Voyages  en  diverses  Provinces,  T.  6. 


264 


THE     CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


"  The  face  flat,  and  very  broad  between  the  zygomatic  arches ;  the  forehead  depressed, 
and  the  nasal  openings  ample:  the  occiput  remarkably  prominent,  so  that  the  distance 
between  the  external  occipital  protuberance  and  the  superior  incisors  is  equal  to  nine 
inches." 

The  Samoiedes  present  us  with  a  conformation  of  the  cranium 
approximating  more  closely  to  the  Eskimo  than  any  of  the  tribes 
just  mentioned.  They  are  conterminous  with  the  Tungus  of  North- 
Eastern  Asia,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  great  Tchudic  or  TJgrian 
tribes  of  European  Russia,  on  the  other.  Pallas  says  of  them,  "  ils 
ont  le  visage  plat,  rond,  et  large."  ....  "lis  ont  de  larges  levres 
retrousees,  le  nez  large  et  ouvert,  peu  de  barbe,  et  les  cheveux  noirs 
et  rudes."  Tooke  ascribes  to  them  "  a  large  head,  flat  nose  and  face, 
with  the  lower  part  of  the  face  projecting  outwards ;  they  have  large 
mouths  and  ears,  little  black  eyes,  but  wide  eyelids,  small  lips,  and 
little  feet."124  "Of  all  the  tribes  of  Siberia,"  says  Latham,  "the 
Samoiedes  are  nearest  to  the  Eskimo  or  Greenlanders  in  their  phy- 
sical appearance."125 
Blumenbach  tells  us  that  a  Samoiede  cranium  in  his  collection, 

bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  skulls 
of  native  Greenlanders,  two  of  which  are 
figured  in  the  Decades.  The  resemblance 
is  shown  in  the  broad,  flat  face,  depressed 
or  flattened  nose,  and  general  shape  or 
conformation  of  the  skull.  The  nasal 
bones  are  long  and  narrow.  This  head  is 
represented  in  Fig.  13,  reduced  from  Tab. 
LIV.  of  Blumenbach's  series. 

Of  all  the  Northern  or  Arctic  races  of 
men,  thus  hastily  passed  in  review,  the 
Eskimo  alone  appear  to  exhibit  the  pyra- 
midal type  of  cranium  in  its  greatest  in- 
tensity. Viewed  in  conjunction  with  the 
following  statements,  this  apparently  isolated  and  accidental  fact 
acquires  a  remarkable  significance. — On  the  shores  of  Greenland  and 
the  banks  of  Hudson's  Straits,  along  the  Polar  coast-line  of  America, 
and  over  the  frozen  tundras  of  Arctic  Asia,  on  the  desolate  banks  of 
the  Lena  and  Indigirka,  and  among  the  deserted  Isles  of  New  Siberia 

—  visited  only  at  long  intervals  by  the  daring  traders  in  fossil  ivory 

—  everywhere,  in  fact,  throughout  the  Polar  Arch,  are  found  the 
same  primitive  graves  and  rude  circles  of  stones,  the  same  stone  axes 
and  fragments  of  whalebone  rafters - 


Samoiede. 
(Decades,  Tab.  LIV.). 


•the  ancient  and  mysterious 


124  Russia,  III.,  p.  12,  quoted  in  Crania  Americana,  p.  51. 

125  Varieties  of  Man,  p.  267. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF    MEN.  265 

vestiges  of  a  people  presenting,  in  general,  the  same  physical  charac- 
ters, speaking  dialects  radically  the  same,  and  differing  but  little  in 
manners  and  customs  —  a  people  once  numerous,  hut  now  gradually 
hastening  on  to  extinction.  Arctic  navigators  speak  of  the  diminish- 
ing numbers  of  the  Eskimo,  and  Siberian  hunters  tell  of  the  disap- 
pearance of  entire  tribes,  such  as  the  Omoki,  "  whose  hearths  were 
once  more  numerous  on  the  banks  of  the  Lena  than  the  stars  of  an 
Arctic  night."  The  earlier  whalers  who  dared  the  northern  waters 
of  Baffin's  Bay,  often  allude  to  the  great  numbers  of  the  natives 
seen  on  the  land  in  this  region,  and  from  the  recent  intrepid  seekers 
of  the  ill-fated  Sir  John  Franklin,  we  learn  that  the  traces  of  these 
people  increase  in  numbers  with  the  latitude.  Thus,  according  to 
Osborn,  the  northern  shores  of  Barrow's  Strait  and  Lancaster  Sound 
bear  numerous  marks  of  human  location,  whereas,  upon  the  southern 
side,  they  are  comparatively  scarce.  He  tells  us,  also,  that  from  the 
estuary  of  the  Coppermine  to  the  Great  Fish  River,  the  Eskimo 
traces  are  less  numerous  than  on  the  north  shore  of  Barrow's 
Strait.126  Again,  the  traditions  of  the  Eskimo  point  to  the  north 
as  their  original  home.  Erasmus  York  spoke  of  his  mother  as 
having  dwelt  in  the  north ;  while  the  inhabitants  of  Boothia  told 
Boss  that  their  fathers  fished  in  northern  waters,  and  described  to 
him,  with  considerable  accuracy,  the  shores  of  North  Somerset. 
When  Sacheuse  told  the  natives  of  Prince  Regent's  Bay,  that  he 
came  from  a  distant  region  to  the  south,  they  answered  "That  can- 
not be ;  there  is  nothing  but  ice  there."127  So,  the  natives  of  North 
Baffin's  Bay  were  ignorant  of  the  existence  of  numerous  individuals 
of  their  own  race,  living  to  the  south  of  Melville's  Bay.  According 
to  Egede  and  Crantz,  the  southern  Eskimo  of  Greenland  consider 
themselves  of  northern  origin.  Their  traditions  speak  of  remote 
regions  to  the  north,  and  of  beacons  and  landmarks  set  up  as  guides 
upon  the  frozen  hills  of  that  dreary  laud.  In  connection  with  these 
facts,  consider  for  a  moment  the  unfavorable  physical  conditions  to 
which  the  Eskimo  is  exposed.  Guyot  thus  forcibly  alludes  to  these 
conditions : 

"In  the  Frozen  Regions,"  says  he,  "man  contends  with  a  niggardly  and  severe  nature; 
it  is  a  desperate  struggle  for  life  and  death.  With  difficulty,  by  force  of  toil,  he  succeeds 
in  providing  a  miserable  support,  which  saves  him  from  dying  of  hunger  and  hardship, 
during  the  tedious  winters  of  that  climate."  And  again,  "The  man  of  the  Polar  Regions 
is  the  beggar,  overwhelmed  with  suffering,  who,  too  happy  if  he  but  gain  his  daily  bread, 
has  no  leisure  to  think  of  anything  more  exalted."128 

126  Arctic  Journal;  or,  Eighteen  Months  in  the  Polar  Regions.     By  Lieut.  S.  Osborn. 

127  Ross's  First  Voyage  to  Baffin's  Bay,  p.  84. 

i2*  Earth  and  Man.     By  Arnold  Guyot,  Boston,  1850,  p.  270. 


266  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

In  this  melancholy  picture,  nature  is  seen  warring  with  herself. 
A  people  forced  to  protect  themselves  against  the  severity  of  an  ex- 
cessive climate  by  the  consumption  of  a  highly  carbonaceous  and 
stimulant  diet,  which,  sooner  or  later,  begets  plethora  and  its  attend- 
ant hemorrhagic  tendencies,  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  a  normal 
people,  harmoniously  adapted  to  the  circumstances  by  which  they 
are  surrounded.  Yet  such  is  the  condition  of  hyperborean  man. 
But  here  a  singular  question  presents  itself.  Have  the  Arctic  tribes 
of  men  always  been  subjected  to  the  inhospitable  climate  which, 
at  the  present  day,  characterizes  the  North  ?  Was  there,  in  other 
words,  a  time  when  they  enjoyed  a  climate  as  mild  as  that  which 
surrounds  their  cranial  analogues  —  the  Hottentots  —  who  roam  the 
plains  of  Kafirland  in  temperate  Southern  Africa  ?  To  the  recent 
speculations  of  climatologists,  concerning  the  distribution  of  tempe- 
rature about  the  pole,  and  the  probable  existence  of  an  open  Polar 
Sea ;  to  the  observations  of  the  physical  geographer  relative  to  the 
gradual  and  progressive  upheaval  of  the  Arctic  coast,  and  the  cli- 
matic changes  which  necessarily  accompanied  such  alterations  in  the 
relation  of  land  and  water ;  and,  finally,  to  the  facts  and  theories 
adduced  by  the  geologist  to  account  for  the  presence,  in  very  high 
latitudes,  of  fossil  remains,  both  animal  and  vegetable — whose  living 
representatives  thrive  in  tropical  climates  only, — must  we  look  for  a 
solution  of  the  above  curious  question,  which  I  introduce  here  merely 
as  one  of  a  connected  series  of  facts  and  arguments  which  seem  to 
indicate  that  the  Eskimo  are  an  exceedingly  ancient  people,  whose 
dawn  was  probably  ushered  in  by  a  temperate  climate,  but  whose 
dissolution  now  approaches,  amidst  eternal  ice  and  snow ;  that  the 
early  migrations  of  these  people  have  been  from  the  north  south- 
wards, from  the  islands  of  the  Polar  Sea  to  the  continent  and  not 
from  the  mainland  to  the  islands;  and  that  the  present  geographical 
area  of  the  Eskimo  may  be  regarded  as  a  primary  centre  of  human 
distribution  for  the  entire  Polar  Zone. 

To  this  subject  I  hope  to  return,  in  a  more  detailed  manner,  here- 
after. 

"We  are  now  in  Europe,  upon  the  terra  damnata,  so  graphically 
described  by  Linnseus,  where  the  Laplander  offers  himself  for  our 
inspection,  as  the  only  European  who  in  any  way,  represents  the 
Arctic  type  of  cranium. 

The  exact  position  of  the  Lapps  in  classification,  is  still  an  open 
question.  Prof.  Agassiz  classifies  them  with  the  Eskimos  and 
Samoiedes. 

"Within  the  limits,"  says  he,  "of  this  (Arctic)  fauna  we  meet  a  peculiar  race  of  men, 
known  in  America  under  the  name  of  Eskirnaux,  and  under  the  names  of  Laplanders, 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  267 

Samoiedes,  and  Tchuktshes  in  the  north  of  Asia.  This  race,  so  well  known  since  the 
voyage  of  Captain  Cook,  and  the  Arctic  expeditions  of  England  and  Russia,  differs  alike 
from  the  Indians  of  North  America,  from  the  Whites  of  Europe,  and  the  Mongols  of  Asia, 
to  whom  they  are  adjacent.  The  uniformity  of  their  characters  along  the  whole  range 
of  the  Arctic  seas  forms  one  of  the  most  striking  resemblances  which  these  people  exhibit 
to  the  fauna  with  which  they  are  so  closely  connected."129 

Prichard,  relying  upon  philological  evidence  —  a  very  unsafe 
guide  when  taken  alone  —  maintains  that  the  Lapps  are  Finns 
who  have  acquired  Mongolian  features  from  a  long  residence  in 
Northern  Europe. 

"On  considere  souvent  les  Lapons,"  observes  D'Hallot,  "comme  appartenant  h  la 
famille  finnoise,  a.  cause  des  rapports  que  l'on  a  observes  entre  leur  langue  et  celle  des 
Finnois ;  mais  les  caracteres  naturels  de  ces  deux  races  sont  si  differents,  qu'il  me  semble 
indispensable  de  les  se'parer.  D'un  autre  cot*;,  tous  les  linguistes  ne  sont  pas  d'accord  sur 
l'analogie  de  ces  langues,  et  il  est  probable  que  les  ressemblances  se  r^duisent  a  l'intro- 
duction,  dans  le  langage  des  Lapons,  d'un  certain  nombre  de  mots  finnois;  effet  qui  a 
ordinairement  lieu  quand  un  peuple  sauvage  se  trouve  en  relation  avec  un  peuple  plus 
avanceV'130 

Latham  arranges  them,  along  with  Finns,  Magyars,  Tungus,  &c, 
under  the  head  of  Turanian  Mongolidse.131  Dr.  Morton  ohjects  to 
this  association  of  Lapps  and  Finns,  and  very  appropriately  inquires 
"  how  it  happens  that  the  people  of  Iceland,  who  are  of  the  unmixed 
Teutonic  race,  have  for  six  hundred  years  inhabited  their  polar 
region,  as  far  north,  indeed,  as  Lapland  itself,  without  approxi- 
mating in  the  smallest  degree  to  the  Mongolian  type,  or  losing  an 
iota  of  their  primitive  Caucasian  features?"132  Indeed,  the  fact  that 
the  Lapps,  at  a  remote  period,  lived  in  Sweden,  and  even  as  far 
south  as  Denmark,133  in  close  juxtaposition  with  the  Finns,  is  suffi- 
cient to  account  for  any  resemblances  in  physical  characters,  which 
may  be  detected  between  the  two.  According  to  Mr.  Brooks,  the 
Laplanders  and  Finns  "have  scarcely  a  single  trait  in  common. 
The  general  physiognomy  of  the  one  is  totally  unlike  that  of  the 
other ;  and  no  one  who  has  ever  seen  the  two,  could  mistake  a  Fin- 
lander  for  a  Laplander."134  He  proceeds  to  state  that  they  differ  in 
mental  and  moral  characters ;   in  the  diseases  to  which  they  are 

129  Sketch  of  the  Natural  Provinces  of  the  Animal  World,  and  their  relation  to  the  dif- 
ferent Types  of  Man,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  Ixi. 

130  Des  Races  Humaines,  &c,  p.  Ill,  note.  m  Op.  cit.,  p.  101. 

132  On  the  Origin  of  the  Human  Species,  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  322. 

133  ii  iis  (ies  Lapons)  forment  une  petite  peuplade  Sparse  dans  la  Laponie,  mais  il  parait 
qu'ils  ont  6t6  beaucoup  plus  developpfe,  car  on  trouve  dans  la  Suede  et  dans  le  Danemark 
des  ossements  d'hommes  qui  se  rapprochent  plus  des  Lapons  que  des  Scandinavcs." 
D'Hallot,  op.  cit.,  p.  111. 

134  x  Winter  in  Lapland  and  Sweden.  By  Arthur  de  Capell  Brooks,  M.  A.,  &c.  Lon- 
don, 1827,  pp.  536-7. 


268  THE    CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

subject,  and,  according  to  Prof.  Retzius,  even  the  intestinal  para- 
sitic worms  of  the  two  are  unlike.135  Hamilton  Smith  remarks  that 
the  "  Finnic  race  repudiates  in  national  pride  all  consanguinity  with 
the  Laplander."136  Dr.  Morton  considers  the  Lapps  as  unquestion- 
ably Mongolian.  Luke  Burke,  the  able  editor  of  the  London  Ethno- 
logical Journal,  appears  to  adopt  another  view : 

"  The  Eskimaux,  the  Lapp,  and  the  Samoide,  are  three  entirely  distinct  beings.     They 

represent  each  other .     They  consequently  offer  a  host  of  resemblances ;  but  resemblances 

and  affinity  are  often  entirely  distinct  matters  in  zoology,  though  they  are  constantly  con- 
founded, even  in  cases  of  the  utmost  importance The  Lapp  is  entirely  European, 

possessing  a  quite  distinct  constitution  from  the  Eskimaux  and  the  Samoide,  and  being 
very  much  higher  than  either  in  the  human  scale,  though  still  by  far  the  lowest  portion  of 
the  European  family.  The  Samoide  is  in  all  respects  a  Mongolidse.  Indeed,  he  has  the 
leading  traits  of  the  family  even  in  excess." Is' 

A  critical  examination  of  three  Laplander  crania,  and  two  casts, 
contained  in  the  collection  of  Dr.  Morton,  and  a  comparison  of  these 
with  a  Kalmuck  head  and  a  number  of  Finnic  skulls,  convince  me 
that  the  Laplander  cranium  should  be  regarded  as  a  sub-typical 
form,  occupying  the  transitionary  place  between  the  pyramidal 
type  of  the  true  Hyperboreans  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  globular- 
headed  and  square-faced  Mongol  on  the  other.  Just  as  upon  the 
shores  of  Eastern  Asia,  we  behold  the  Arctic  form  passing  through 
the  Kamtsckatkan  and  the  Southern  Tungusian  into  the  Central 
Asiatic  type,  so  in  the  western  part  of  the  great  Asio-European 
continent,  we  behold  a  similar  transition  through  the  Lapponic  into 
the  Tchudic  and  Scandinavian  types  —  the  most  northern  of  the 
European. 

It  is  strictly  true  that  the  skulls  of  the  Eskimo,  Laplander,  and 

135  The  following  curious  paragraph,  relating  to  entozoal  ethnology,  I  find  in  Prof.  Owen's 
admirable  Lectures  on  the  Comparative  Anatomy  and  Physiology  of  the  Invertebrate  Animals 
(2d  edition,  p.  67) :  "  The  Taenia  Solium  is  that  which  is  most  likely  to  fall  under  the  notice 
of  the  British  medical  practitioner.  It  is  the  common  species  of  tapeworm  developed  in  the 
intestines  of  the  natives  of  Great  Britain ;  and  it  is  almost  equally  peculiar  to  the  Dutch 
and  Germans.  The  Swiss  and  Russians  are  as  exclusively  infested  by  the  Bolhrioeephalus 
latus.  In  the  city  of  Dantzig  it  has  been  remarked,  that  only  the  Taenia  Solium  occurs ; 
while  at  Kb'nigsberg,  which  borders  upon  Russia,  the  Bolhrioeephalus  latus  prevails.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  French  provinces  adjoining  Switzerland  are  occasionally  infested  with 
both  kinds  of  tapeworm.  The  natives  of  North  Abyssinia  are  very  subject  to  the  Taenia 
Solium,  as  are  also  the  Hottentots  of  South  Africa.  Such  facts  as  to  the  prevalent  species 
of  tapeworm  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  if  duly  collected  by  medical  travellers,  would 
form  a  body  of  evidence,  not  only  of  elminthological,  but  of  ethnological  interest.  In  the 
Bolhrioeephalus  latus  of  some  parts  of  Central  Europe  and  of  Switzerland  we  may  perceive 
an  indication  of  the  course  of  those  North-Eastern  hordes  which  contributed  to  the  sub- 
version of  the  Roman  Empire ;  and  the  Taenia  Solium  affords  perhaps  analogous  evidence 
of  the  stream  of  population  from  the  sources  of  the  Nile  southward  to  the  Cape." 

13S  Op.  cit.,  p.  321. 

1S'  Charleston  Medical  Journal  and  Review,  July  1856;  pp.  446-7. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


269 


Samoiede  are  not  identical,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  Neither 
are  the  localities  of  these  people.  The  various  portions  of  the  so-called 
Arctic  realm,  of  Agassiz,  do  not  accord  precisely  in  geographical  and 
climatic  conditions.  Arctic  America  and  Asia  more  closely  resemble 
each  other  than  they  do  Arctic  Europe.  The  same  thing  is  true,  of  the 
skulls,  and  of  the  organism  generally,  of  their  human  inhabitants.  A 
deeply  indented  sea-border ;  direct  and  positive  relations  to  the  Gulf 
Stream  which  divides  upon  the  Norwegian  coast  into  two  great  cur- 
rents, bathes  and  tempers  the  whole  north-western  shore,  and  supplies 
an  immense  body  of  warm,  humid  air,  which  serves  to  ameliorate  the 
otherwise  extremely  harsh  and  rugged  climate ;  a  range  of  lofty  moun- 
tains running  parallel  with  the  western  coast,  and  acting  as  great  con- 
densers of  atmospheric  vapor ; — such  are  the  physical  peculiarities 
which  give  to  Lapland-Europe  an  organic  physiognomy  somewhat 
different  from  other  sections  of  the  Arctic  realm.  In  this  region  the 
tree-limit  obtains  its  highest  northern  position  in  lat.  70°-71°  N.,  and 
if  we  trace  this  line  eastward,  on  a  physical  chart,  we  will  find  that, 
under  the  influence  of  a  continental  climate,  it  recedes  towards  the 
Equator,  until  in  Kamtsehatka  it  reaches  the  ocean  in  58°  N.  latitude. 
So  that  while  in  a  considerable  portion  of  Lapland  we  find  a  wooded 
region,  in  Asia  it  will  be  observed  that  a  large  part  of  the  country  of 
the  Samoiedes  and  Tungus,  and  the  whole  of  that  of  the  Koriaks, 
Yukagirs  and  Tchuktchi,  lie  to  the  north  of  the  wooded  zone.  Upon 
the  American  continent,  which  is  colder  under  the  same  parallels 
than  the  Asiatic  —  in  consequence  of  the  presence  of  a  greater  quan- 
tity of  land  in  these  high  latitudes  —  the  Eskimo  live  entirely  in  a 
treeless  region.  The  distribution  of  the  bread-plants  in  Northern 
America,  Europe,  and  Asia,  reveals  to  us  similar  irregularities.  We 
need  not  be  surprised,  therefore,  if,  in  harmony  with  these  varying 
physical  and  organic  conditions,  we  should 
find  the  Lapland  cranium  differing  more 
from  those  of  the  Eskimo  and  Samoiede 
than  these  two  do  from  each  other. 

The  skull  here  figured  is  reduced  from 
Tab.  XLIII.  of  the  Decades.  Blumen- 
bach  describes  it  as  "large  in  proportion 
to  the  stature  of  the  body ;  the  form  and 
appearance  altogether  such  as  prevail  in 
the  Mongolian  variety ;  the  calvaria  almost 
globose ;  the  zygomatic  bones  projecting 
outwards;  the  malar  fossa,  plane ;  the  fore- 
head broad;  the  chin  slightly  prominent  Laplander. 


Fig.  14. 


270  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

and  acuminated ;  the  palatine  arch  level ;  the  fissure  in  the  floor  of 
the  orbit  very  large." 

Turning  our  backs  upon  the  Frozen  Ocean,  and  tracing  to  their 
sources  the  three  great  rivers — the  Obi,  Yennisei,  and  Lena — which 
drain  the  slopes  of  Northern  Asia,  we  gradually  exchange  the  region 
of  tundras  and  barren  plains,  for  elevated  steppes  or  table-lands,  the 
region  of  the  reindeer  and  dog  for  that  of  the  horse  and  sheep,  the 
region  whose  history  is  an  utter  blank  for  one  which  has  witnessed 
such  extensive  commotions  and  displacements  of  the  great  nomadic 
races,  who,  probably,  in  unrecorded  times,  dwelt  upon  the  central 
plateaux  of  Asia,  before  these  had  lost  their  insular  character.  Tra- 
velling thus  southward,  we  further  remark  that  a  globular  conforma- 
tion of  the  human  skull  replaces  the  long,  narrow,  pyramidal  type  of 
the  North. 

In  our  attempt  to  exhibit  a  general  view  of  the  cranial  forms  or 
types  of  Central  Asia,  I  deem  it  best  to  direct  attention  to  the  region 
of  country  which  gives  origin  to  the  Yennisei,  about  Lake  Baikal, 
and  in  the  Greater  Altai  chain,  south  of  the  TJriangchai  or  Southern 
Samoiedes.  For  we  here  encounter,  in  the  Kalkas  and  Mongolians 
proper  of  the  desert  of  Shamo,  a  type  of  head  which  is  distinct  from 
that  of  the  Hyperboreans,  and  to  which  the  other  great  nomadic  races 
are  related,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree.  I  have  selected,  as  the  most 
fitting  representative  of  this  Asiatic  type  or  form,  the  cranium  of  a 
Kalmuck  (No.  1553  of  the  Mortonian  Collection),  sent  to  the  Aca- 
demy by  Mr.  Cramer,  of  St.  Petersburg,  shortly  after  the  decease  of 
Dr.  Morton.  This  skull  is  chosen  as  a  standard  for  reference,  on 
account  of  the  "  extent  to  which  the  Mongolian  physiognomy  is  the 
type  and  sample  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  divisions  of  the 
human  race."138  Moreover,  the  Mongols  possess  the  physical  cha- 
racters of  their  race  in  the  most  eminent  degree,139  they  are  the  most 
decidedly  nomadic,  and  their  history,  under  the  guidance  of  Tchengiz- 
Khan  and  his  immediate  successors,  constitutes  a  highly-important 
chapter  in  the  history  of  the  world ;  and,  finally,  because  they  occupy 
the  centre  of  a  well-characterized  and  peculiar  floral  and  faunal  re- 
gion, extending  from  Japan  on  the  east  to  the  Caspian  on  the  west. 

In  the  accompanying  figure,  the  reader  will  observe  that  the  cra- 
nium is  nearly  globular,  while  the  forehead  is  broad,  flat,  and  less 
receding  than  in  the  Eskimo  and  Kamtskatkan.     Without  being 

138  Latham,  Varieties  of  Man,  p.  63. 

139  "  It  is  easy,"  says  Pallas,  "  to  distinguish,  by  the  traits  of  physiognomy,  the  principal 
Asiatic  nations,  who  rarely  contract  marriage  except  among  their  own  people.  There  is 
none  in  which  this  distinction  is  so  characterized  as  among  the  Mongols."  See  Prichard's 
Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  p.  215. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF    MEN. 


271 


ridged  or  keel-like,  the  medium  line  KS- 15- 

of  the  cranium  forms  a  regular  arch, 
the  most  prominent  point  of  which 
is  at  the  junction  of  the  coronal  and 
sagittal  sutures.  Behind  and  above 
the  meatus,  the  head  swells  out  into 
a  globe  or  sphere,  instead  of  tapering 
away  postero-laterally  towards  the 
median  line,  as  in  the  Eskimo  cra- 
nia. This  appearance  is  also  well 
seen  in  the  head  figured  by  Blumen- 
bach.140  He  says  of  it,  "habitus  to- 
tius  cranii  quasi  iiiflatus  et  tumidus." 

The  eye  at  once  detects  the  striking  difference  between  the  facial 
angle  of  this  cranium  and  that  of  the  Eskimo  above  figured.  In  the 
latter,  the  facial  bones  resemble  a  huge  wedge  lying  in  front  of  the 
head  proper.  This  appearance,  it  is  true,  is  somewhat  dependent 
upon  the  obtuseness  of  the  angle  of  the  lower  jaw,  but  mainly,  as 
will  be  seen,  upon  the  prominent  chin  and  prognathous  jaw.  In  the 
Kalmuck,  the  facial  bones  form  a  sort  of  oblong  figure,  and  are  by 
no  means  so  prominent.  The  face  is  broad,  flat,  and  square;  the 
superciliary  ridges  are  massive  and  prominent ;  the  orbits  are  large, 
and  directed  somewhat  outwards ;  the  ossa  nasi  are  broad  and  rather 
flat,  forming  an  obtuse  angle  with  each  other ;  the  malar  bones  are 
large,  strong,  protuberant,  and  roughly  marked. 

The  impropriety  of  classifying  the  Eskimo,  Samoiedes,  &c,  along 
with  the  Mongols  —  an  error  which  pervades  many  of  the  books  — 
is  clearly  manifested,  I  think,  by  the  above  figure  and  description. 
IT  we  apply  the  term  Mongolian  to  the  Eskimo,  then  we  must  seek 
some  other  epithet  for  the  Kalmuck.  The  heads  of  the  two  races 
contrast  strongly.  The  one  is  long  and  narrow,  the  face  very  broad, 
flat,  and  lozenge-shaped,  and  decidedly  prognathous ;  the  other  is 
globular,  swelling  out  posteriorly,  while  the  face  is  broad,  fiat,  and 
square.  On  the  other  hand,  Prichard  has  very  properly  observed, 
that  "  the  Mongolian  race  decidedly  belongs  to  a  variety  of  the  human 
species,  which  is  distinguished  from  Europeans  by  the  shape  of  the 
skull."141 

Morton's  collection  contains,  also,  a  cast  of  the  skull  of  a  Burat 
Mongol,142  in  which  the  above  characters  are  readily  distinguished. 

»o  Table  XIV.  of  the  Decades.  ™  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  p.  214. 

112  The  Bouriats,  dwelling  about  Lake  Baikal,  manifest  more  aptitude  for  civilization  than 
either  the  Kalmucks  or  the  Mongols  proper.  Tchihatcheff  informs  us  that  the  Russian 
Government  employs,  in  frontier  service,  several  regiments  of  these  people,  "who  have  been 


272  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

These  characters  agree  perfectly  with,  those  represented  in  Tab. 
XXIX.  of  the  Decades,  and  in  Fischer's  Osteological  Dissertation.10 
The  descriptions,  given  by  travellers,  of  the  Mongolic  physiognomy, 
correspond  very  well  with  the  foregoing  observations  upon  the 
cranium. 

"  The  Mongols  and  Bouriats  have  so  great  a  resemblance  to  them"  (the  Kalmucks),  says 
Pallas,  "  both  in  their  physiognomy,  and  in  their  manners  and  moral  economy,  that  what- 
ever is  related  of  one  of  these  nations  will  apply  as  well  to  the  others The  charac- 
teristic traits  in  all  the  countenances  of  the  Kalmucks,  are  eyes,  of  which  the  great  angle, 
placed  obliquely  and  downwards  towards  the  nose,  is  but  little  open  and  fleshy ;  eyebrows 
black,  scanty,  and  forming  a  low  arch ;  a  particular  conformation  of  the  nose,  which  is 
generally  short,  and  flattened  towards  the  forehead ;  the  bones  of  the  cheek  high ;  the  head 
and  face  very  round.  They  have  also  the  transparent  cornea  of  the  eye  very  brown ;  lips 
thick  and  fleshy ;  the  chin  short ;  the  teeth  very  white :  they  preserve  them  fine  and  sound 
until  old  age.     They  have  all  enormous  ears,  rather  detached  from  the  head."144 

Between  the  Caspian  Sea  on  the  west,  and  the  Great  Altai  Moun- 
tains on  the  east,  and  between  the  parallel  of  Tobolsk  on  the  north, 
and  the  head-waters  of  the  Oxus  on  the  south,  lies  a  country,  whose 
physical  aspects  are  not  more  interesting  to  the  geologist  and  the 
physical  geographer,  than  are  its  human  inhabitants  to  the  ethno- 
grapher. In  this  region  we  are  called  upon  to  study  an  extensive 
steppe,  intersected  with  lofty  mountains,  among  which  are  the  feeding 
springs  of  many  large  rivers.  Over  this  steppe,  and  among  these 
mountains,  have  wandered,  from  the  remotest  times,  a  distinct  and 
peculiar  type  of  people,  who  have  played  a  most  important  part  in 
the  history  of  the  world  —  a  people  who  had  established,  centuries 
ago,  a  vast  empire  in  the  heart  of  Asia,  having  China  for  its  eastern, 
and  the  Caspian  Sea  for  its  western  border',  and  who,  when  pressed 
towards  the  south-west  by  their  nomadic  neighbors,  the  Mongols, 
in  their  turn  fell,  with  devastating  fury,  upon  Europe,  and  long  held 
its  eastern  portions  in  subjection.  I  allude  to  the  Turkish  family, 
whose  history  would  be  replete  with  interest,  even  if  it  offered  us  but 
the  single  fact,  that  the  Turks,  like  the  Goths  of  Europe  and  the 
Barbarian  Tribes  of  North  America  —  races  occupying,  in  their  re- 
spective countries,  about  the  same  parallels  of  latitude — were  selected 
at  a  former  period,  to  break  in  upon  the  high,  but  at  that  time  lethar- 
gic, civilization  of  a  more  southern  clime.  "In  the  Yakut  country 
we  find  the  most  intense  cold  known  in  Asia ;  in  Pamer  the  greatest 
elevation  above  the  sea-level ;  in  the  south  of  Egypt,  an  inter-tropical 
degree  of  heat.     Yet  in  all  these  countries  we  find  the  Turk."  U5 

well  organized  and  disciplined  after  the  European  system.  See  his  Voyage  dans  V Altai 
orientate,  p.  190. 

143  Dissertatio  Osteologica  de  Modo  quo  Ossa  se  vicinis  accommodant  Partibus.  Ludg. 
Bat.  1713,  4to.,  tab.  1. 

144  Quoted  from  Prichard,  op.  cit.,  p.  215.  145  Latham,  op.  cit.,  p.  77. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  273 

It  is  while  studying  the  physical  characters  of  this  intei'esting 
people,  that  the  cranioscopist,  in  view  of  the  little  attention  which 
his  favorite  science  has  received,  and  the  scanty  materials,  therefore, 
by  which  he  is  guided,  is  forced  to  exclaim,  in  the  language  of  St. 
Augustine,  "Mirantur  homines  altitudines  montium,  ingentes  fluctus 
maris,  altissimos  lapsus  numinum  et  oeeani  ambitum  et  gyros  siderum 
et  relinquunt  se  ipsos,  nee  mirantur." 

Much  discrepancy  of  opinion  exists  with  regard  to  the  origin, 
homogeneity,  and  characteristic  physical  conformation  of  the  Turkish 
family.  In  consequence  of  the  application  of  the  term  Tartar,  their 
origin  has  been  assigned  to  the  tribes  of  Lake  Bouyir,  in  East  Mon- 
golia. Remusat,  Klaporth,  and  Ritter  regard  them  as  descendants 
of  the  Hiong-lSTu,  who,  prior  to  the  Christian  Era,  threatened  to 
overrun  and  subjugate  China  with  their  mighty  hordes.  Pkichard 
is  inclined  to  consider  this  opinion  unquestionable.146  D'Omalius 
D'Halloy  classifies  them  along  with  the  Finns  and  Magyars,  as  de- 
scendants or  representatives  of  the  ancient  Scythse.1"  Latham  makes 
a  remark  which  evinces  a  concurrence  of  opinion — "  A  large,  perhaps 
a  very  large  portion  of  the  Scythse  must  have  been  Turk ;  and  if  so, 
it  is  amongst  the  Turks  that  we  must  look  for  some  of  the  wildest 
and  fiercest  of  ancient  conquerors."  On  a  preceding  page  he  ob- 
serves, "Practically,  I  consider  that  the  Mongoliform  physiognomy 
is  the  rule  with  the  Turk,  rather  than  the  exception,  and  that  the 
Turk  of  Turkey  exhibits  the  exceptional  character  of  his  family.""3 

Much  of  this  difference  of  opinion  appears  to  result  from  the  nota- 
ble fact  that,  in  traversing  the  Turkish  area,  we  encounter  different 
types  of  countenance  and  of  physical  conformation  generally.  In 
the  absence  of  an  adequate  collection  of  crania  representing  the 
numerous  tribes  composing  this  family  —  which  collection  would  be 
of  the  greatest  utility  in  deciding  this  mooted  point — we  are  forced 
to  adopt,  by  way  of  explanation,  one  or  other  of  the  three  following 
suppositions : — Either  the  typical  Mongolian  of  Eastern  Asia  passes, 
by  certain  natural  transitionary  forms,  —  displayed  by  the  tribes  of 
Turkish  Asia — into  the  European  type  ;  or,  the  Turk  once  possessed 
a  peculiar  form,  standing  midway  between  that  of  the  European  and 
Mongol,  the  intervening  sub-types  or  forms  having  resulted  from  a 
double  amalgamation  on  the  part  of  the  Turk ;  or,  lastly,  we  must 
recognise  in  the  Mongolian  form  a  primitive  type,  which,  by  amal- 
gamation with  the  European,  has  begotten  the  Turk.  The  second 
of  these  propositions  appears  to  me  the  most  tenable.  However,  as 
Dr.  Morton's  collection  contains  no  skulls  of  the  Turkish  tribes,  I 

i«  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  p.  209.  "'  Des  Races  Humaines,  p.  83. 

148  Varieties  of  Man,  pp.  78-9. 
18 


274 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


Fig.  16. 


have  not  the  necessary  data  to  arrive  at  a  positive  conclusion  as  to 
the  existence  of  a  primary  and  peculiar  cranial  type  among  the 

Turks.  Nevertheless,  if  the  reader  will 
carefully  inspect  the  accompanying  figure 
of  a  Turkish  cranium  in  the  Blunienba- 
chian  collection,  and  compare  it  with  our 
Kalmuck  standard,  I  deem  it  highly  pro- 
bable that  he  will  with  me  recognize  for 
the  Turkish  region  a  sub-typical  form, 
which,  though  closely  related  to  the  Mon- 
golic,  differs  from  it  mainly  in  possessing 
a  more  oval  face,  and  a  more  decidedly 
globular  skull.  Blumenbach  thus  de- 
Ttok.  scribes  the  head  in  his  possession: 

"  The  cranium  is  nearly  globular ;  the  foramen  magnum  is  placed  almost  at  the  posterior 
end  of  the  basis  cranii,  so  that  there  seems  to  be  no  occiput ;  the  forehead  broad  ;  the 
glabella  prominent;  the  malar  fossa?  gently  depressed,  and  the  proportions  of  the  face, 
upon  the  whole,  symmetrical  and  elegant.  The  external  occipital  protuberance  is  but  little 
developed ;  the  occipital  condyles  very  large  and  convex ;  the  alveolar  edge  of  the  superior 
maxilla  very  short,  so  that  just  beneath  the  nose  it  scarcely  equals  in  height  the  breadth 
of  the  little  finger." 

Judging  from  the  accounts  of  travellers,  it  would  seem  that  among 
the  most  Eastern  of  the  Turkish  races,  such  as  the  Kirghis  of  Bal- 
kash  and  the  irreclaimable  nomades  of  the  dreary  plains  of  Turkistan, 
the  Mongolic  physiognomy  more  especially  predominates.  This,  it 
will  be  recollected,  is  the  region  in  which  the  Mongols  proper  and 
the  Turks  meet  and  overlap.  The  skull  of  a  Kirghis,  figured  by 
Blumenbach  (Tab.  XLTI.)  furnishes  a  good  exemplification  of  the 
cranial  form  of  this  region.  In  a  Don  Cossack  (Tab.  IY.)  the  Mon- 
golian tendency  is  equally  manifest.  The  Yakuts  of  the  Lena,  before 
described,  and  the  Nbjai  Tartars  (judging  from  a  figure  in  Hamilton 
Smith's  work),  also  belong  to  this  type.149  South  of  the  Kirghis  are 
the  Uzbecks,  who,  according  to  Lieut.  Wood,  resemble  the  former, 
but  are  better  proportioned.  The  reader  will  obtain  some  general 
idea  of  the  points  of  resemblance  and  difference  between  the  Uzbecks 
and  their  Eastern  conquerors/  by  referring  to  the  portrait  of  Sjah 
Mierza,  an  Uzbeck  Tartar,  in  the  "Ethnographic  Tableau"  illus- 
trating Mr.  Gliddon's  Chapter  VI. 

Through  the  skulls  of  the  Osmanli  Turks  and  the  Tartars  of  the 
Kasan  —  especially  the  latter  —  the  Turkish  head  proper  graduates 


«=  Op.  cit.,  plate  9,  fig.  2. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


275 


into  the  European  form 
anciently  civilized  of  the  race.  The 
high  European  forms  so  often  seen 
among  the  Osmanlis  are  no  longer  pro- 
blematic. A  knowledge  of  the  hete- 
rogeneous additions  accepted'  by  their 
Seldjukian  ancestors,  and  already  re- 
ferred to  in  sufficient  detail,  has  served 
not  a  little  to  dissipate  the  mystery 
attached  to  this  subject.  Of  the  genea- 
logical impurity  of  the  Turks  I  think 
there  can  be  but  little  doubt.  Their 
indiscriminate  amalgamations  are  thus 
briefly  hinted  at  by  D'Halloy  : 


Both  these  tribes  are  among  the  most 


Fig.  17. 


Tartar. 


"Tl  parait,"  says  he,  "d'apres  les  portraits  d'anciens  peuples  turos,  que  Ton  a  trouve's 
dans  les  historiens  chinois,  que  ces  peuples  avaient  originairement  des  cheveux  roussatres, 
et  que  leurs  yeux  6taient  d'un  gris  verdatre  ;  mais  ces  caracteres  se  sont  perdus,  et  main- 
tenant  on  remarque  que  les  Turcs  qui  habitent  au  nord-est  du  Caucase,  participent  plus  ou 
moins  des  caracteres  des  Mongols,  et  que  ceux  e^ablis  au  sud-ouest  pr£sentent  les  formes 
de  la  race  blanche  d'une  maniere  trfe-prononce'e,  mais  avec  des  cheveux  et  des  yeux  noire ; 
circonstances  qui  s'expliquent  par  le  melange  avec  les  Mongols  pour  les  premiers,  et  par 
celui  avec  les  Perses  et  les  Aranie'ens  pour  les  seconds,  d'autant  plus  que  les  Turcs,  qui 
sont  ge'ne'ralement  polygames,  ont  beaucoup  de  gout  pour  les  femmes  (itrangeres."  15° 

Quite  recently,  Major  Alexander  Cunningham,  of  the  Bengal 
Engineers,  has  given  us  an  excellent  account  of  the  physical  charac- 
ters of  the  Bhotiyahs,  an  interesting  race  occupying  a  considerable 
portion  of  Thibet  and  the  Himalayan  range  of  mountains. 

"The  face  of  the  Boti,"  says  he,  "is  broad,  flat,  and  square,  with  high  cheek-bones, 
large  mouth,  and  narrow  forehead.  The  nose  is  broad  and  flat,  and  generally  much  turned 
up,  with  wide  nostrils,  and  with  little  or  no  bridge.  The  eyes  are  small  and  narrrow,  and 
the  upper  eyelids  usually  have  a  peculiar  and  angular  form  that  is  especially  ugly.  The 
eyes  are  nearly  always  black;  but  brown,  and  even  blue  eyes,  are  seen  occasionally.  The 
inner  corners  are  drawn  downwards  by  the  tension  of  the  skin  over  the  large  cheek-bones ; 
the  eyelids  are  therefore  not  in  one  straight  line,  parallel  to  the  mouth,  as  is  the  case  with 
Europeans,  but  their  lines  meet  in  a  highly  obtuse  angle  pointing  downwards.  This  gives 
an  appearance  of  obliquity  to  the  eyes  themselves  that  is  very  disagreeable.  The  ears  are 
prominent,  very  large,  and  very  thick;  they  have  also  particularly  long  lobes,  and  are 
altogether  about  one-half  larger  than  those  of  Europeans.  The  mouth  is  large,  with  full 
and  somewhat  prominent  lips.  The  hair  is  black,  coarse,  and  thick,  and  usually  straight 
and  crisp.  Bushy  heads  of  hair  are  sometimes  seen,  but  I  believe  that  the  frizzly  appear- 
ance is  not  due  even  in  part  to  any  natural  tendency  to  curl,  but  solely  to  the  tangled  and 
thickly  agglomerated  matting  of  the  hair  consequent  upon  its  never  having  been  combed  or 
washed  from  first  to  second  childhood."151 

iM  Op.  cit.,  pp.  89,  90. 

161  Ladak,  Physical,  Statistical,  and  Historical,  with  Notices  of  the  Surrounding  Countries, 
London,  1854,  p.  296. 


276  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

A  Penjur  of  Lhassa  is  thus  described  by  Hodgson  : 

" Face  moderately  large,   sub-ovoid,  widest  between  angles  of  jaws,  less  between 

cheek-bones,  which  are  prominent,  bnt  not  very.  Forehead  rather  low,  and  narrowing  some- 
what upwards ;  narrowed  also  transversely,  and  much  less  wide  than  the  back  of  the  head. 
Frontal  sinus  large,  and  brows  heavy.  Hair  of  eye-brows  and  lashes  sufficient ;  former  not 
arched,  but  obliquely  descendent  towards  the  base  of  nose.  Eyes  of  good  size  and  shape, 
but  the  inner  angle  decidedly  dipt,  or  inclined  downwards,  though  the  outer  is  not  curved 
up.  Iris  a  fine,  deep,  clear,  chestnut-brown.  Eyes  wide  apart,  but  well  and  distinctly 
separated  by  the  basal  ridge  of  nose,  not  well  opened,  cavity  being  filled  with  flesh.  Nose 
sufficiently  long,  and  well  raised,  even  at  base,  straight,  thick,  and  fleshy  towards  the  end, 
with  large  wide  nares,  nearly  round.  Zygomte  large  and  sabent,  but  moderately  so.  Angles 
of  the  jaws  prominent,  more  so  than  zygomte,  and  face  widest  below  the  ears.  Mouth 
moderate,  well-formed,  with  well-made,  closed  lips,  hiding  the  fine,  regular,  and  no  way 
prominent  teeth.  Upper  lip  long.  Chin  rather  small,  round,  well  formed,  not  retiring. 
Vertical  line  of  the  face  very  good,  not  at  all  bulging  at  the  mouth,  nor  retiring  below,  and 
not  much  above,  but  more  so  there  towards  the  roots  of  the  hair.  Jaws  large.  Ears  mode- 
rate, well  made,  and  not  starting  from  the  head.  Head  well  formed  and  round,  but  longer 
H  parte  post  than  a  parte  ante,  or  in  the  frontal  region;  which  is  somewhat  contracted  cross- 
wise, and  somewhat  narrowed  pyramidally  upwards Mongolian  cast  of  features 

decided,  but  not  extremely  so  ;  and  expression  intelligent  and  amiable." 152 

Klaporth  has  shown  that  a  general  resemblance  prevails  between 
the  languages  of  the  Turk,  Mongolian,  and  Tungusian.  The  fore- 
going remarks  upon  the  cranial  characters  of  these  people,  are,  to 
some  extent,  confirmatory  of  the  slight  affinity  here  supposed  to  be 
indicated.  The  Turk  and  Mongol,  however,  appear  to  me  to  be 
more  related  to  each  other  than  to  the  Tungusian,  whose  cranial 
conformation  must  rather  be  regarded  as  transitionary  from  the 
pyramidal  type.  Indeed,  the  Tungusian  tribes  seem  to  connect  the 
Chinese  with  the  frozen  Worth ;  for,  in  a  modified  degree,  the  same 
differences  which  separate  the  true  Hyperborean  from  the  typical 
Mongol,  also  separate  the  Chinese  from  the  latter.  In  other  words, 
the  Chinese  nation,  in  the  form  of  their  heads,  resembles  the  great 
Inuit  family  more  than  the  Mongolian.  This  opinion  is  based  upon 
the  critical  examination  of  eleven  Chinese  skulls,  obtained  from 
various  sources,  and  now  comprised  in  the  Mortonian  collection. 

If  we  compare  together  the  lateral  or  profile  view  of  the  Eskimo 
(Fig.  10)  with  that  of  a  Chinese  (ISTo.  94  in  Morton's'collection — the 
head  of  "  one  of  seventeen  pirates  who  attacked  and  took  the  French 
ship  'Le  aSTavigateur,'  in  the  China  Sea"),  it  will  be  seen  that  they 
both  present  the  same  long,  narrow  form,  appearing  as  if  laterally 
compressed.  In  both  the  temporal  ridge  mounts  up  towards  the 
vertex,  and  in  both  a  large  surface  is  presented  for  the  attachment 
of  the  temporal  muscle.  In  both  the  forehead  is  recedent,  and  the 
occiput  prominent.     But,  while  in  the  Eskimo  (and  this  is  a  charac- 

162  Journal  of  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal,  vol.  xvii.,  part  2,  p.  222.  See  also  Prichard's 
Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  edited  by  Edwin  Norms,  vol.  I.  p.  219. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN. 


277 


Chinese  (No.  94). 


teristic  feature)  the  greater  portion  Fl§-  18- 

of  the  malar  surface  looks  ante- 
riorly, thus  giving  the  dispropor- 
tionate sub-orbital  breadth  to  the 
face ;  in  the  Chinese,  on  the  con- 
trary, I  find  that  the  greater  por- 
tion of  this  surface  looks  laterally, 
the  zygomatic  arches  not  being 
separated  so  widely.     Hence,  the 
greatest   transverse    diameter   of 
the  base  of  the  Chinese  cranium 
does  not  fall  in  the  anterior  re- 
gion between  the  zygomse,  as  we 
have  seen  to  be  the  case  in  the 
Eskimo  cranium.     It  should  be  observed,  moreover,  that  the  jaw  is 
more  rounded  and  less  massive  in  the  latter  than  in  the  former.     In 
the  Chinese,  the  chin  is  more  acuminated ;  but  it  is  a  curious  fact 
that  in  both  we  have  the  same  prognathous  character  of  the  upper 
jaw.     "When  we  compare  the  two  facially,  we  become  aware  that 
they  differ,  not  only  in  breadth  of  face,  but  also  in  that  particular 
element  which  helps  to  give  to  the  face  of  the  Eskimo  its  diamond 
or  lozenge  shape.     In  this  latter,  the  forehead  is  flat,  narrow,  and 
triangular ;  in  the  Chinese,  a  broader,  less  flat,  and  square  forehead 
changes  the  character  of  the  face,  as  is  shown  in  all  the  specimens 
which  I  have  examined,  especially  in  ISTos.  426  and  427  of  Morton's 
collection.    Other  features  equally  interesting  I  might  point  out,  but 
my  space  does  not  permit,  and,  moreover,  I  hope  to  be  able  to  return 
to  this  inquiiy  in  a  future  publication.     On  page  45  of  the  Crania 
Americana,  I  find  the  following  description,  from  the  pen  of  Dr. 
Morton  : 


"  The  Chinese  skull,  so  far  as  I  can  judge  from  the  specimens  that  have  come  under  my 
inspection,  is  oblong-oval  in  its  general  form ;  the  os  frontis  is  narrow  in  proportion  to  the 
width  of  the  face,  and  the  vertex  is  prominent:  the  occiput  is  moderately  flattened;153  the 
face  projects  more  than  in  the  Caucasian,  giving  an  angle  of  about  seventy-five  degrees; 
the  teeth  are  nearly  vertical,  in  which  respect  they  differ  essentially  from  those  of  the 
Malay ;  and  the  orbits  are  of  moderate  dimensions  and  rounded." 

Blanchard  thus  alludes  to  the  Chinese  cranium : 

"  Dans  les  cranes  de  Chinois,154  la  face  vue  par  devant  est  allonge's ;  elle  n'a  plus  ces 
cotes  paralleles  que  nous  avons  signaled  dans  les  races  oceaniques,  elle  s'amincit  graduelle- 
ment  vers  le  bas.  Le  coronal  est  large ;  mesurf  dans  sa  plus  grande  e'tendue,  la  largeur 
equivaut  a  peu  pres  a  la  hauteur,  prise  de  I'origine  des  os  nasaux  a  sa  jonction  avec  les 


153  This  feature  I  cannot  detect  in  any  of  the  above-mentioned  eleven  skulls. 

154  PI.  43  of  Dumoutier'a  Atlas. 


278  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

parietaux  sur  la  ligne  mediane.  Observe  par  devant,  on  voit  clairement,  que  sans  affeeter 
la  forme  vraiment  pyramidale  propre  aux  Polynesiens  et  un  peu  aux  Malayo-Polynesieus,  il 
se  retrecit  graduellement  vers  le  sommet.  Vu  de  profil,  le  front  se  montre  en  general  assez 
rejete  en  arriere.  Le  maxillaire  superieur  est  assez  etroit  et  assez  allonge ;  le  maxillaire 
inferieur  est  egalement  etroit,  comparativenient  an  developpement  de  la  portion  superieure 
de  la  tete.  Les  os  maxillaires  sont  assez  proeminents  comme  on  peut  s'en  rendre  compte 
aisdment  en  considerant  une  tete  de  Chinois  par  le  profil.  La  region  occipitale  s'etend  peu 
en  arriere.  Ces  caracteres  se  voient  nettement  dans  les  tetes  representees  par  M.  Dumou- 
tier,  et  nous  les  avons  retrouvds  dans  plusieurs  sujets  qui  existent  dans  la  collection  anthro- 
pologique  du  Museum  d'histoire  naturelle  de  Paris. 

"Si  nous  comparons  ces  tetes  de  Chinois  avec  celles  des  habitants  des  Philippines,155 
les  differences  sont  bien  palpables,  et  pourtant  il  y  a  une  grande  analogie  dans  la  forme 
gendrale,  dans  le  contour  coronal  observe  par  devant.  La  face,  chez  les  Chinois,  est  beau- 
coup  plus  allongee ;  le  front,  vu  de  profil,  est  moins  oblique,  ce  qui  donne  necessairement 
plus  d'ampleur  a,  la  partie  autero-superieure  de  la  tete ;  les  os  niaxillaires  sont  aussi  sensi- 
blement  moins  avancds :  de  la  un  angle  facial  un  peu  plus  onvert.  Enfin,  dans  tous  les 
cas,  la  partie  posterieure  de  la  tete  est  un  peu  moins  allongee. 

"  De  ces  faits  il  resulte  que  la  tete  des  Chinois,  tres-analogue  sons  bien  des  rapports  a, 
celle  des  Malais,  en  differe  d'une  facon  notable  et  se  rapproche  d'autant  du  type  europeen. 
Mais  lorsq'on  vient  a.  mettre  en  presence  les  cranes  de  Chinois  et  d'Europeens,  c'est  une 
difference  bien  autrement  importante  qui  se  manifeste  devant  des  yeux  exerces  a,  ce  genre 
d'etude.  Un  naturaliste  de  la  Hollande,  M.  Vander  Hqsven,  a  deja  indique  plusieurs 
differences  dans  les  proportions  du  crane.156  Chez  le  Chinois,  la  face  est  plus  longue  que 
chez  1'Europeen,15'  Tangle  facial  est  bien  moins  ouvert,  le  coronal  deprime,  sauf  une  ligne 
courbe  presqne  reguliere  de  la  base  au  sommet,  tandis  que  dans  la  tete  de  TEuropeen,  le 
front  est  presqne  droit  et  forme  presque  un  coude  au  sommet,  pour  aller  rejoindre  les 
parietaux ;  tout  cela,  sans  doute,  avec  des  nuances  bien  prononcees,  mais  ce  qui  n'en  est 
pas  moins  encore  tres-marque,  quand  on  compare  des  tetes  d'hommes  de  races  aussi 
differentes. 

"  En  mettant  en  presence  des  tetes  de  Chinois  et  d'hommes  de  race  semitique,  il  y  a  un 
peu  plus  de  rapport,  plus  de  rapport  surtout  dans  la  longueur  de  la  face.  Chez  les  Juifs, 
les  Arabes,  etc.,  cependant,  si  le  frontal  est  plus  rejete  en  arriere  que  chez  les  Europeens, 
quand  on  le  considere  par  devant,  on  voit  qu'il  reste  large  au  sommet,  au  lieu  de  se  retreeir 
comme  chez  les  Chinois.  Dans  les  tetes  de  Chinois,  les  os  nasaux  sont  moins  saillants,  les 
os  maxillaires  sont  plus  proeiuinents,  la  partie  posterieure  de  la  tete  est  moins  oblongue. 

"  Enfin  les  Chinois,  d'apres  tous  les  caracteres  anthropologiques  que  nous  pouvons 
observer,  se  montrent  dans  le  genre  humain  comme  un  type  bien  earacterise  et  comme  un 
type  inferieur  aux  races  europeennes  et  semitiques,  ainsi  que  cela  resulte  d'un  angle  facial 
moins  ouvert,  d'une  ampleur  moins  grande  de  la  portion  antero-superieure  de  la  tete,  et 
d'une  saillie  plus  considerables  des  os  maxillaires.  Or  comme  il  n'est  pas  douteux  que 
l'ampleur  de  la  partie  antero-superieure  de  la  tete  ne  soit  un  indice  de  superiorite,  et  le 
developpement  des  os  maxillaires  un  indice  d'inferiorite,  l'anthropologiste  doit  classer  la 
race  chinoise  comme  inferieure  aux  races  de  l'Europe  et  de  l'Orient.  L'etude  de  l'histoire, 
des  mceurs,  des  resultats  intellectuels  de  ces  peuples  conduit  absolument  a  la  memo 
classification." 15s 

The  Japanese  are  generally  considered  as  belonging  to  the  same 
type  as  the  Chinese.  The  collection  contains  but  one  Japanese 
skull,  presented  by  Dr.  A.  M.  Lynch,  TJ.  S.E".     The  appearance  of 

i55  PI.  40  of  Dumoutier's  Atlas. 

166  Annales  des  Sciences  naturelles,  2"  sdrie. 

m  Dumoutier's  Atlas,  pi.  25,  bis.  158  Op.  cit.,  pp.  228-34. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN". 


279 


this    cranium    does    not    exactly  Fig.  19. 

comport  with  the  above  state- 
ment. Knowing  nothing  of  its 
history,  and  having  no  other  for 
comparison,  I  simply  annex  a 
representation  of  it  without  fur- 
ther comment.159 

These  observations,  in  the  ag- 
gregate, conflict  with  the  opinion 
of  Pmchard, —  an  opinion  sus- 
tained by  many  others — that  "the 
Chinese,  and  the  Koreans,  and  the 

Japanese  belong  to  the  same  type  of  the  human  species  as  the 
nations  of  High  Asia."  He  explains  away  the  evident  differences 
by  a  certain  softening  and  mitigation  of  the  Mongolian  traits. 
Latham  also  calls  the  Chinese  a  "Mongol  softened  down."  Such 
expressions  are  unfortunate;  they  lead  to  misconceptions  which 
often  seriously  retard  the  progress  of  science,  particularly  its  dif- 
fusion among  the  masses.160 

The  Indo-Chinese  nations,  including  the  Mantchurian  Tungus,  or 
those  south  of  the  Alden,  should  be  regarded  as  a  distinct  but  closely 
allied  type,  a  type  bearing  certain  resemblances  to  the  pyramidal 
form  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  globular  on  the  other,  but  positively 
separated  from  these  two  by  certain  slight  but  apparently  constant 
differences. 

The  Koreans,  judging  from  the  description  of  Siebold,  exhibit  the 
same  type. 

"L' ensemble  de  leurs  traits  perte,  en  general,  le  caractere  de  la  race  Mongole;  la  largeur 
et  la  rudesse  de  la  figure,  la  preeminence  des  pommettes,  le  de>eloppement  des  machoires, 


159  "  Les  Japonais,"  says  D'Halloy,  "  ont  en  g^neVal  les  caracteres  mongoliques  moins 
prononce"es  que  les  Chinois,  ce  que  l'on  attribue  a  un  melange  avec  d'autres  peuple,  peut- 
etre  des  Kouriliens,  qui  auraient  habits  le  pays  avant  eux."    Op.  cit.,  p.  124. 

160  Upon  p.  235  of  bis  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  Prichard  gives  a  profile  view  of  a  Chinese 
cranium,  which,  he  says,  "appears  to  differ  but  little  from  the  European."  Now  if  any 
one,  at  all  familiar  with  European  skull-forms,  will  take  the  trouble  to  inspect  the  figure  in 
question,  he  will  at  once  perceive  how  erroneous  is  the  above  statement.  Every  careful 
craniographer  must  object  to  such  loose  remarks.  Again,  upon  the  third  and  fourth  plates 
of  his  work,  he  compares  together  the  crania  of  a  Congo  negro,  a  Chetimache  Indian  of 
Louisiana,  and  a  Chinese  of  Canton,  and  from  the  manifest  resemblances  between  them,  he 
ventures  to  assert  that  the  characteristics  of  these  widely-separated  races  cannot  be  relied 
upon  as  specific.  In  the  Mortonian  collection,  so  numerously  represented  in  American  and 
African  skulls,  and  containing  twelve  Chinese  crania,  also,  I  cannot  find  a  parallel  instance 
of  this  similarity.  I  am  forced  to  conclude,  therefore,  either  that  Dr.  P.  was  mistaken  as 
to  the  sources  of  these  skulls,  or  that  we  should  regard  their  similarity  as  one  of  those 
exceptional  or  aberrant  examples,  which  occasionally  arise  to  puzzle  the  cranioscopist  in 
the  present  unsettled  state  of  the  science. 


280  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

la  forme  e'crase'e  de  la  racine  nasale  et  les  ailes  61argies  du  uez,  la  grandeur  de  la  bonche, 
l'fipaisseur  des  levres,  l'apparente  obliquity  des  yeux,  la  chevelure  roide,  abondante,  d'un 
noir  bruDatre  ou  tirant  sur  le  roux,  1'epaisseur  des  sourcils,  la  raret*;  de  la  barbe,  et  enfin 
un  teint  couleur  de  froment,  rouge  jaunatre,  les  font  reconnaitre,  au  premier  abord,  pour 
des  naturels  du  nord  et  de  FAsie.  Ce  type  se  retrouve  ehez  la  plupart  des  Cortiens  que  nous 
avons  vus,  et  ils  conviennent  eux  memes  que  c'est  celui  qui  distingue  le  niieux  leur  nation." 

He  proceeds  to  express  his  conviction  of  the  co-existence  of  two 
distinct  types  in  this  region. 

Of  the  tribes  of  the  Trans-Gangetic  or  Indo-Chinese  Peninsula, 
the  Mortonian  collection  contains  but  one  representative — a  Cochin- 
Chinese  from  Turon  Bay  (ISTo.  1527) — which  appears  to  me  artiUcially 
deformed.  I  am  therefore  unable,  at  present,  to  arrive  at  any  deter- 
mination of  their  cranial  type.  Finlayson  describes  these  tribes  in 
the  following  manner : 

"  The  face  is  remarkably  broad  and  flat ;  the  cheek-bones  prominent,  large,  spreading, 
and  gently  rounded ;  the  glabellum  is  flat,  and  unusually  large ;  the  eyes  are,  in  general, 
small ;  the  aperture  of  the  eyelids,  moderately  linear  in  the  Indo-Chinese  nations  and  the 
Malays,  is  acutely  so  in  the  Chinese,  bending  upwards  at  its  outer  end ;  the  lower  jaw  is 
long,  and  remarkably  full  under  the  zygoma,  so  as  to  give  to  the  countenance  a  square 
appearance ;  the  nose  is  rather  small  than  flat,  the  alse  not  being  distended  in  any  uncommon 
degree;  in  a  great  number  of  Malays,  it  is  largest  towards  its  point;  the  mouth  is  large, 
and  the  lips  thick ;  the  beard  is  remarkably  scanty,  consisting  only  of  a  few  straggling 
hairs ;  the  forehead,  though  broad  in  a  lateral  direetion,'is  in  general  narrow,  and  the  hairy 
scalp  comes  down  very  low.  The  head  is  peculiar;  the  antero-posterior  diameter  being 
uncommonly  short,  the  general  form  is  rather  cylindrical ;  the  occipital  foramen  is  often 
placed  so  far  back  that  from  the  crown  to  the  nape  of  the  neck  is  nearly  a  straight  line. 
The  top  of  the  head  is  often  very  flat.  The  hair  is  thick,  coarse,  and  lank ;  its  color  is 
always  black."161 

Dr.  Rtjschenberger  thus  describes  the  Siamese : 

"  The  forehead  is  narrow  at  the  superior  part,  the  face  between  the  cheek-bones  broad, 
and  the  chin  is  again  narrow,  so  that  the  whole  contour  is  rather  lozenge-shaped  than  oval. 
The  eyes  are  remarkable  for  the  upper  lid  being  extended  below  the  under  one  at  the  corner 
next  to  the  nose ;  but  it  is  not  elongated  like  that  organ  in  the  Chinese  or  Tartar  races. 
The  eyes  are  dark  or  black,  and  the  white  is  dirty,  or  of  a  yellowish  tint.  The  nostrils  are 
broad,  but  the  nose  is  not  flattened,  like  that  of  the  African.  The  mouth  is  not  well  formed, 
the  lips  projecting  slightly ;  and  it  is  always  disfigured,  according  to  our  notions  of  beauty, 
by  the  universal  and  disgusting  habit  of  chewing  areca-nut.  The  hair  is  jet  black,  renitent 
and  coarse,  almost  bristly,  and  is  worn  in  a  tuft  on  the  top  of  the  head,  about  four  inches 
in  diameter,  the  rest  being  shaved  or  clipped  very  close.  A  few  scattering  hairs,  which 
scarcely  merit  the  name  of  beard,  grow  upon  the  chin  and  upper  lip,  and  these  they  cus- 
tomarily pluck  out. 

"  The  occipital  portion  of  the  head  is  nearly  vertical,  and,  compared  with  the  anterior 
and  sincipital  divisions,  very  small ;  and  I  remarked,  what  I  have  not  seen  in  any  other 
than  in  some  ancient  Peruvian  skulls  from  Pachacamac,  that  the  lateral  halves  of  the  head 
are  not  symmetrical.  In  the  region  of  firmness  the  skull  is  very  prominent ;  this  is  remark- 
ably true  of  the  talapoins." 162 

161  Embassy  to  Siam  and  Hue,  p.  230. 

162  \  Voyage  Round  the  World ;  including  an  Embassy  to  Muscat  and  Siam.    By  W.  S.  W 
Ruschenberger,  M.  D.     Philada,,  1838,  p  299. 


OF     THE     RACES    OF     MEN.  281 

Neal  [Residence  in  the  Kingdom  of  Siam)  assures  us  that  the  Siamese 
differ  in  their  physical  characters  from  all  the  surrounding  nations. 

According  to  Morton,  among  the  inhabitants  of  Cochin-China,  or 
Annam,  "the  general  form  of  the  face  is  round,  so  that  the  two 
diameters  are  nearly  equal.  The  forehead  is  short  and  broad,  but 
the  occipital  portion  of  the  head  is  more  elongated  than  in  the 
people  of  Siam.  The  chin  is  large  and  broad  ;  the  beard  grisly  and 
thin,  the  hair  copious,  coarse,  and  black;  the  nose  small,  but  well-' 
formed,  and  the  lips  moderately  thick." 

Blanchard  alludes  to  the  inhabitants  of  Malacca,  and  the  forms 
of  their  crania,  in  the  following  terms : 

"La  population  de  Malacca,  du  reste,  comme  celle  des  lies  de  la  Sonde,  n'est  pas  homo- 
gene  ;  il  y  en  a  vine  partie  qui  priSsente  mie  civilisation  analogue  a  celle  des  Malais ;  il  y  en 
a  une  autre,  form6e  de  tribus  incultes,  qui  habite  les  forets  de  l'inte'rieur  du  pays.  Lea 
tetes  des  naturels  de  Malacca  representees  dans  l'atlas  de  M.  Dumoutier  ne  sauraient  etre 
rapproche'es  indifferemment  de  toutes  celles  que  nous  avons  decrites  des  habitants  de  la 
Malaisie. 

"Vues  par  devant,  ce  sont  des  faces  courtes  comme  chez  tous  les  peuples  des  races 
malaises.  Mais  ici  il  n'y  a  pas  cette  ampleur  du  coronal  et  des  parigtaux  que  nous  avons 
signaled  chez  le  naturel  d'Amboine,  represent*;  dans  notre  atlas,  ni  chez  le  Bughis  de 
Ouadjou,  ni  chez  les  naturels  des  Philippines. 

"  Chez  nos  individus  de  Malacca,  Ton  observe  aussi  un  plus  grand  developpement  des  os 
maxillaires,  et  Ton  retrouve  ainsi  cette  forme  a  cotes  paralleles  que  nous  avons  vu  si  I16- 
quemment  dans  les  types  pre'ce'demment  dticrits. 

"  M.  Dumoutier  a  place  les  tetes  de  naturels  de  Malacca  sur  la  meme  planche  que  lo 
naturel  d'Amnoubang  de  Tile  de  Timor;  nous  ne  croyous  pas  qu'il  faille  venir  chercher  ici 
une  ressemblance  bien  grande.  Dans  la  tete  du  Timorien,  le  front  est  plus  bas  et  plus  large 
vers  le  haut,  la  partie  posterieure  de  la  tete  est  plus  allong^e,  les  maxillaires  sont  plus 
avanc^s,  etc. 

"Ces  hommes  de  Malacca  ressemblent,  au  confraire.  d'une  maniere  frappante,  au  Bughis 
de  1'Etat  de  Sidenring  dont  il  a  6t&  question  plus  haut. 

"C'estla  meme  face,  courte,  avec  le  coronal  £troit,  pen  €1e\6,  rejete'  en  arriere,  dSprime 
au-dessus  des  arcades  sourcilieres;  seulement  chez  le  Bughis  il  y  a  une  tendance  un  pcu 
plus  marquee  a  la  forme  pyramidale.  Les  apophyses  zygomatiques  sont  de  meme  extre- 
mement  saillantes ;  le  maxillaire  supijrieur  est  large  et  court,  sans  i'etre  autant  que  chez 
le  naturel  de  Celebes,  et  le  maxillaire  infe"rieur  est  aussi  fort  large.  Enfin  chez  les  uns  et 
les  autres  la  region  posterieure  n'est  que  peu  dtendue  en  arriere. 

"En  rfcuine\  il  n'est  pas  douteux  que  le  Bughis  represents  dans  l'atlas  de  M.  Dumoutier 
et  les  individus  de  Malacca  appartiennent  a  la  meme  race.  Le  fait  que  nous  constatons  ici 
devient  une  grande  preuve  a  l'appui  de  l'opinion  tres-re"pandue  parmi  les  ethnogrnphes  que 
les  Bughis  sont  les  descendants  d'individus  originaires  du  continent.  Ce  qui  jette  toujoui-s 
dans  un  grand  embarras,  e'est  la  diversity  des  types  observes  sur  la  plupart  des  points  de 
la  Malaisie  et  dans  les  divers  endroits  du  continent  indien."163 

The  above  descriptions  evidently  lead  to  the  recognition  of  several 
varieties  or  sub-types  of  cranial  form  in  the  Indo-Chinese  Peninsula, 
some  of  which  are  more  or  less  related  to  the  predominating  type  of 

163  Op.  cit.,  pp.  220-2. 


282  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

Central  Asia,  while  others  approximate  the  Malayan,  and  through 
these  the  Polynesian  forms.  Indo-China  may  therefore  be  regarded 
as  the  transitionary  or  debatable  ground  between  Asia  and  Polynesia. 

Concerning  the  skull-forms  of  the  mysterious  aboriginal  tribes  of 
this  region,  who  here  and  there  "crop  out"  above  the  prevailing 
type  (the  perplexing  representatives  of  an  earlier  and  perhaps  primi- 
tive humanitarian  epoch),  I  have  nothing  to  say,  being  without  the 
necessary  material.  Among  these  relics  of  a  former  time  may  be 
enumerated  the  savage  Garo,  or  hill-tribes  of  South-west  Assam, 
with  their  Negro  characteristics ;  the  savage  blacks  of  the  Andam- 
man  Isles ;  and  certain  wild  tribes  dwelling  to  the  north  of  Ava,  and 
differing  from  the  dominant  population  in  language,  religion,  and 
physical  characters.  These,  in  common  with  the  Bheels  and  Govand 
tribes  of  Guzerat,  the  Puharrees  of  Central,  the  Cohatars  of  Southern, 
and  the  Jauts  of  Western  India,  all  seem  to  be  the  remnants  of  a 
once  powerful  and  widely-spread  people. 

Very  few,  if  anjr,  people  are  more  varied  in  their  physical  charac- 
ters than  the  great  Indostanic  Family.  Conquest  and  amalgamation 
have  disguised  and  altered  its  primitive  types  in  a  remarkable  degree. 
Only  here  and  there,  in  the  mountainous  regions,  do  we  catch  a  glimpse 
of  these  types.  A  portion  of  the  aborigines  appear  to  have  been  of  a 
dark  or  quite  black  complexion. 

"In  general,  the  face  is  oval,  the  nose  straight  or  slightly  aquiline,  the  mouth  small,  the 
teeth  vertical  and  well-formed,  and  the  chin  rounded  and  generally  dimpled.  The  eyes  are 
black,  bright,  and  expressive,  the  eyelashes  long,  and  the  brow  thin  and  arched.  The  hair 
is  long,  black,  and  glossy,  and  the  beard  very  thin.  The  head  of  the  Hindoo  is  small  in 
proportion  to  the  body,  elongated  and  narrow  especially  across  the  forehead,  which  is  only 
moderately  elevated."  16i 

The  collection  contains  in  all  forty-three  crania  of  the  Indostanic 
Race.  Among  these  skulls,  at  least  two  types  can  be  distinguished. 
1st.  The  fair-skinned  Ayras,  a  conquering  race,  speaking  a  Sanscrit 
dialect,  and  occupying  Ayra-Varta,  which  extends  from  the  Vindya 
to  the  Himalaya  Mountains,  and  from  the  Bay  of  Bengal  to  the 
Indian  Ocean,  and  comprises  the  Mahrattas,  and  other  once  powerful 
tribes,  who  have  so  boldly  and  obstinately  resisted  the  English  arms. 
These  tribes  are  of  Persian  origin.  They  migrated  to  India,  accord- 
ing to  M.  Guigniaut,  as  early  as  3101  b.  c.  2d.  The  Bengalee, 
represented  by  thirty-five  skulls.  Dr.  Morton  considers  these  small- 
statured,  feeble-minded,  and  timid  people  as  an  aboriginal  race  upon 
whom  a  foreign  language  has  been  imposed. 

Of  the  eight  Ayra  skulls  in  the  collection,  six  are  of  the  Brahmin 

16i  Crania  Americana,  p.  32. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


283 


caste,  and  two  are  Thuggs.  Fig. 
20  —  the  skull  of  Sumboo-Sing, 
hanged  at  Calcutta  for  murder  — 
very  well  represents  this  peculiar 
type.  In  the  Anthropologic  of 
Emile  Blanchard,  the  reader  will 
find  an  interesting  comparison 
drawn  between  the  Hindoo,  Malay, 
and  Micronesian  forms  of  the  cra- 
nium. 

I  have  already,  in  substance,  ex- 
pressed the  opinion  that  the  cra- 
nium of  the  Lapp,  in  point  of  con-  Hindu  (1330). 
formation,  must  be   regarded   as 

constituting  the  connecting  link  between  the  types  predominating 
in  the  Boreal  Zone,  and  those  encountered  among  the  European  or 
Indo-Germanic  races.  I  have  also  ventured  the  opinion  that,  through 
the  Osmanlis  and  the  Khazan  Tartars,  the  Mongolic  form,  character- 
izing the  Asiatic  realm,  glided,  by  an  easy  transition,  into  the  Euro- 
pean. But  Asia  graduates  into  Europe  still  more  naturally,  perhaps, 
through  the  races  constituting  the  widely-spread  Finnic  or  Tchudic 
family,  which,  at  an  epoch  antedating  the  earliest  records,  occupied 
the  country  extending  from  Norway  to  the  Yennisei,  north  of  the 
55th  degree  of  latitude  in  Asia,  and  the  60th  in  Europe.  I  have  now 
to  state  that,  through  the  Affghan  skull,  the  Indostanic  blends  with 
the  Semitic  foirn.  Thus,  then,  it  appears  that,  in  pursuing  our  cra- 
nial investigations,  it  is  immaterial  what  route  we  take  in  passing 
from  the  Asiatic  into  the  so-called  European  or  Caucasian  area. 
Whether  we  journey  from  Hindustan  through  Affghanistan,  seeking 
the  table-lands  of  Iran ;  or,  setting  out  from  the  heart  of  Mongolia, 
traverse  the  Turkish  region,  and  so  enter  Asia  Minor ;  or,  penetrate 
from  the  North-East  into  Scandinavia,  through  the  intervening  Lapps 
and  Finns,  we  meet  with  the  same  result — a  type  which  is,  in  general, 
as  unlike  that  of  the  great  region  just  surveyed,  as  are  the  animal 
and  vegetable  forms  of  these  two  countries. 

The  home  of  the  so-called  European,  Caucasian,  or  White  race, 
comprehends  Europe,  Africa  north  of  the  Saharan  Desert,  and  South- 
western Asia.  This  extensive  region  may,  for  convenience  of  study, 
be  divided  into  four  provinces,  of  which  the  first,  extending  from 
Finnmark  southward  into  the  heart  of  Europe,  is  occupied  by  the 
Teutonic,  Gothic,  or  Scythic  family ;  the  second  comprises  Western 
and  Southern  Europe,  and  is  inhabited  by  the  Celtic  family;  the 
third,  located  in  Eastern  Europe,  contains  the  great  Shlavic  group ; 


284  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

while  the  fourth,  or  Africo-Asiatic,  extends  along  the  southern  shore 
of  the  Mediterranean  into  Asia,  as  far  east  as  Affghanistan,  and  is 
occupied  by  the  expansive  Semitic  family.  A  closer  and  more  criti- 
cal examination  of  these  four  divisions  compels  us  to  recognise  for 
each  a  number  of  minor  areas  or  limited  districts,  which,  while  they 
bear  to  each  other  a  general  family  likeness,  are  also  characterized 
by  floral  and  faunal  peculiarities,  in  harmony  with  certain  cranial 
distinctions  about  to  be  noticed. 

When  to  the  increasing  number  of  naturally  sub-typical  forms  are 
added  the  innumerable  hybrid  varieties  resulting  from  the  extensive 
migrations  and  endless  intermixtures  which,  from  remote  times,  have 
been  going  on  in  this  region,  it  becomes  evident  that  any  attempt  at 
a  successful  generalization  of  these  forms  must  necessarily  be  at- 
tended with  much  difficulty.  To  grasp  the  idea  of  a  European  type 
is  one  thing;  to  select  from  a  number  of  skulls  one  which  shall 
embody  the  essentials  of  this  idea,  so  as  to  serve  for  a  standard,  is 
quite  another. 

In  the  consideration  of  European  types,  I  commence  with  the 
Finns. 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  associate  the  Ugrian  family,  in  point 
of  origin,  with  the  nomadic  races  of  Central  Asia.  But  historically, 
no  proof  can  be  adduced  that  they  ever  dwelt  as  a  body  upon  the 
plateaux  of  this  latter  region.  They  are  not  true  nomades ;  and,  as 
far  as  I  can  learn,  differ  in  physical  characters  from  their  neighbors. 
The  only  support  to  the  opinion  is  a  certain  affinity  of  language. 
Anciently  the  Ugrian  area  extended  from  the  Baltic  into  Trans- 
Uralian  Siberia.  The  western  extremity  penetrated  Europe,  and 
was  inhabited  by  the  True  Finns,  whose  relation  to  the  Lapps  I  have 
al  ready  briefly  alluded  to.  The  eastern  extremity  mainly  comprised 
the  Ugrians  or  Jugorians.  Between  the  two  dwelt  the  Tchudas 
proper.  Latham  is  disposed  to  bring  the  Samoiedes,  Yenniseians, 
and  Yukahiri  into  this  area,  thus  carrying  the  Ugrians  nearly  to 
Bhering's  Strait,  and  almost  in  contact  with  the  Eskimo.165  Ana- 
tomical characters  not  to  be  slighted,  not  to  be  explained  away,  are, 
however,  against  the  attempt. 

Through  the  kindness  of  Prof.  Retzius,  of  Stockholm,  the  Mor- 
tonian  collection  has  been  lately  increased  by  the  addition  of  nine 
specimens  of  the  true  Finnic  stock.  Of  these  heads,  I  find  the  largest 
internal  capacity  is  112-5,  the  smallest  81-5,  and  the  mean,  95-3  cubic 
inches.  From  an  examination  of  these  skulls,  the  following  brief 
description  is  derived :  The  regularly  developed  head  has  a  square  or 

165  The  Native  Races  of  the  Russian  Empire.  By  R.  G.  Latham,  M.  D.,  &c,  being  vol.  II. 
of  the  Ethnographical  Library,  conducted  by  E.  Norris,  Esq.     London,  1854,  pp.  12,  13. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


285 


somewhat  angularly  round  appear- 
ance. The  antero-posterior  dia- 
meter being  comparatively  short, 
it  falls  within  the  brachy-cephalic 
class  of  Retzius.  The  forehead  is 
broad,  though  less  expansive  than 
in  the  true  Germanic  race.  This 
frontal  breadth,  the  lateral  expan- 
sion of  the  parietalia,  and  the  flat- 
ness of  the  os  occipitis,  give  to  the 
coronal  region,  when  viewed  per- 
pendicularly, a  square,  or  rather 
slightly  oblong  appearance.     The 


Fig.  21. 


Finn  (1537). 


face  is  longer  and  less  broad  than  in  the  Mongolian  head,  while  the 
lower  jaw  is  larger,  and  the  chin  more  prominent.  Hence,  the  lower 
part  of  the  face  is  advanced,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  the  Scla- 
vonian  face.  The  whole  head  is  gather  massive  and  rude  in  struc- 
ture, the  bony  prominences  being  strongly  characterized,  and  the 
sutures  well  defined.  The  general  configuration  of  the  head  is 
European,  bearing  certain  resemblances,  however,  to  the  Mongolian 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Sclavonian  on  the  other. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  the  great  diversity  of  opinion  relative 
to  the  affiliations  of  the  Finns,  and  the  position  to  which  they  should 
be  assigned  in  ethnic  classification.  Malte-Brun  distinguishes  them 
from  both  the  Sclavonians  and  Germans,  but  associates  them  with 
the  Lapps.166  Pinkerton  coincides  in  this  view,  but  is  inclined 
to  consider  the  Lapps  a  peculiar  variety.167  Burdach  classes  the 
Finns  with  the  Sclaves  and  Lapps.168  Bort  de  St.  Vincent  con- 
siders the  Lapps,  Samoiedes,  and  Tchuktchi  as  Hyperboreans,  and 
recognizes  in  the  Finns  a  variety  of  the  Sclavonic  race.169  Htjece 
regards  the  Finns  as  a  distinct  people,  differing  from  both  the  Euro- 
pean and  Mongolian  families.170  "The  Fin  organization,"  writes 
Latham,  "has  generally  been  recognized  as  Mongol — though  Mon- 
gol of  the  modified  kind."171  The  original  identity  of  the  Finns 
and  Lapps  has  been  argued  from  certain  linguistic  affinities  between 
the  two  races.     Prichard  considers  the  evidence  of  their  consan- 


lro  System  of  Universal  Geography.     Edinburgh,  1827.     Vol.  VT.  p.  75. 

1C'  Modern  Geography.  Philadelphia,  1804,  Vol.  I.  pp.  383,  404.  Walckenaee,  the 
French  translator  and  editor  of  this  work,  draws  a  strong  line  of  distinction  between  the 
Finns  and  Lapps.      Geographic  Moderne.    Paris,  1804,  t.  3eme,  p.  258,  note. 

168  Der  Mensch,  cited  by  Hueck. 

169  L'Homme,  Essai  Zoologique  sur  le  Genre  Humaine.     3e  edit.,  t.  1. 

1.0  De  Craniis  Estonum,  p.  11. 

1.1  Native  Races  of  the  Russian  Empire,  p.  72. 


286  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

guinity  to  be  sufficiently  well  demonstrated,172  and  cites  Leemius, 
G-tjnnerus,  Porthan,  Ihre,  Rask,  and  others  as  advocates  of  this 
opinion.  Opposed  to  this  identity,  however,  are  the  well-marked 
physical  differences  observed  by  tiearly  all  the  travellers  who  have 
visited  these  people.  Linn-^us,  long  ago,  pointed  out,  in  the  con- 
cise terms  of  the  naturalist,  the  most  prominent  of  these  differences. 
"  Fennones  corpore  toroso,  capillis  flavis  prolixis,  oeulorum  iridibus 
fuscis.  Lappones  corpore  parvo,  capillis  nigris,  brevibus,  rectis; 
oeulorum  iridibus  nigrescentibus."  Very  ingenious  theories  have 
been  advanced  to  reconcile  this  assumed  consanguinity  with  the 
anatomical  differentiae  above  indicated.  Thus  Von  Buch  ascribes 
this  difference  to  the  fact,  that  of  the  two  people,  the  Finns  alone 
use  hot  baths  and  warm  clothing.  Long  separation  and  exposure  to 
different  physical  influences  have  also  been  deemed  sufficient  to 
account  for  the  discrepancy. 

In  consideration  of  the  animated  controversy  which  has  been 
carried  on  by  the  learned  concerning  the  relationship  of  the  Lapp 
and  the  Finlander,  it  may  be  well  to  introduce  here  the  carefully 
drawn  description  of  an  Esthonian  skull,  originally  published  in 
Latin  by  Dr.  A.  Hueck,  of  Dorpat.173  There  are  reasons  for  con- 
sidering the  Finnic  type  to  be  preserved  in  its  greatest  purity  among 
the  Esthonians.  These  people  appear  to  be  the  indigence  of  Esthonia; 
at  least,  "no  earlier  population  seems  to  have  preceded  them."17* 

"In  the  Esthonian  race,"  says  Dr.  H.,  "the  skull,  though  angular,  is  not  very  robust. 
A  square  form  is  most  frequently  observed,  and  even  when  it  passes  into  an  oval  shape, 
which  is  often  the  case,  it  presents  a  well-defined  appearance  of  angularity.  A  pyramidal 
or  wedge-like  figure  (forma  cuneata)  is  more  rarely  encountered,  and  it  has  never  happened 
to  me  to  observe  a  round  Esthonian  skull. 

"At  first  sight,  the  calvaria,  when  compared  with  the  facial  skeleton,  appears  large; 
and,  if  viewed  from  above  or  behind,  square :  for  not  only  are  the  parietal  bosses  very 
prominent,  but  the  occiput,  in  the  region  of  the  superior  linea  semicircularis,  is  strongly 
arched  both  posteriorly  and  towards  the  sides.  The  sinciput  is  a  little  less  broad  than  the 
occiput;  the  forehead  is  plane,  less  gibbous  than  usual  and  low.  The  frontal  breadth  is 
only  apparent,  because  the  more  projecting  external  orbitar  process,  with  the  equally 
prominent  malar  bones  below,  is  continuous  with  the  smoother  posterior  part  of  the  semi- 
circular line  of  the  os  frontis.  The  temporal  fossa  is  capacious,  though  not  very  deep,  and 
is  terminated  anteriorly  by  the  firm  posterior  margin  of  the  frontal  process  of  the  malar 
bone,  and  externally  by  a  sufficiently  strong  zygomatic  arch,  under  which  juts  out  in  the 
posterior  side  the  articular  tubercle  or  crest,  by  which  the  zygomatic  arch  is  continued 
above  the  external  opening  of  the  ear.  Moreover,  the  condyloid  processes  of  the  occipital 
bone  appear  to  me  larger  and  more  prominent  than  in  the  other  skulls.     On  the  other  hand, 

172  Researches,  iii.,  297. 

173  De  Craniis  Estonum  commentatio  anthropologica  qua  viro  illustrissimo  Joanni  Theo- 
doro  Busgh,  doctoris  dignitatem  impetratam  gratulatur  Ordo.  Med.  Univers.  Dorpatensis, 
interprete  Dr.  Alexander  Hueck,  Dorpati  Livonorum,  1838,  4to.,  pp.  7-10. 

171  See  Latham's  Native  Races  of  the  Russian  Empire,  p.  75. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  287 

the  mastoid  process,  in  all  the  (Esthonian)  skulls  which  I  have  examined,  is  small  and  less 
rough ;  the  Kussian  crania,  on  the  contrary,  excel  in  long  and  thick  mastoid  processes. 
Not  more  developed  is  the  external  occipital  protuberance ;  nor  in  general  are  the  impres- 
sions of  the  muscles  very  conspicuous  on  the  occipital  bone. 

"  Upon  comparing  the  base  of  the  skull,  I  have  found  no  differences  of  greater  moment. 
However,  the  internal  occipital  protuberance  appears  to  me  greater  than  usual ;  the  crucial 
lines  are  strongly  characterized,  and  the  transverse  furrows  deeper.  While  the  ossa  petrosa 
project  considerably  into  the  cranial  cavity,  the  os  occipitale,  where  it  forms  the  inferior 
occipital  fossa,  is  less  convex ;  hence,  from  this  conformation,  the  space  occupied  by  the 
cerebellum  is  manifestly  narrowed.  Nothing  else  is  observable,  except  that  the  depressions 
in  the  anterior  part  of  the  cranium  present  a  more  angular  form,  and,  finally,  the  jugular 
foramina  appear  to  me  larger  than  in  the  skulls  of  other  races  of  men. 

"  The  facial  part,  compared  with  the  calvaria,  is  small,  broad,  and  low.  The  breadth 
(of  the  face)  is  produced,  not  so  much  by  the  development  of  the  malar  bones,  as  in  skulls 
of  the  Mongolian  variety,  but  rather  by  a  greater  prominence  of  the  malar  process  of  the 
superior  maxilla.  On  this  account,  the  inter-malar,  compared  with  the  frontal,  diameter, 
appears  much  greater  than  in  Europeans  in  general.  Hence,  the  external  orbital  margins 
are  flared  out  more,  the  distance  between  these  margins  is  greater  chan  the  breadth  of  fore- 
head, and  the  orbits  themselves  are  wider.  Therefore,  the  malar  process  of  the  maxillary 
bone,  being  thus  rendered  more  prominent,  the  antrum  Highmorianuni  becomes  necessarily 
more  capacious.  For  a  similar  reason,  the  sphenoidal  sinuses,  also,  are  deeper  than  in 
German  heads.  And  even  the  cells  of  the  ethmoid  are  greater,  and  the  paper-like  lamina, 
which  is  ordinarily  vertical,  is  rather  arched  in  the  Esthonians,  and  projects  towards  the 
orbit,  blending  gradually  with  the  orbital  surface  of  the  body  of  the  superior  maxilla.  The 
frontal  sinuses  are  very  large,  which,  in  the  external  aspect,  is  indicated  by  a  prominent 
glabella  and  projecting  superciliary  arches 

"The  malar  process  of  the  upper  maxilla  is  stronger  than  usual;  on  the  other  hand,  the 
frontal  and  alveolar  processes  of  the  same  bone  are  shorter ;  hence,  the  whole  face,  from 
the  naso-frontal  suture  to  the  alveolar  margin,  is  shortened  in  length.  This  broad  and  lon- 
gitudinally contracted  form  of  the  face  especially  affects  the  form  of  the  orbits,  and  gives 
to  the  6kull  of  the  Esthonians  its  most  characteristic  type.  For,  in  comparison  with  their 
breadth,  the  orbits  are  low,  and  transversely  oblong  or  almost  square  in  shape.  This  ap- 
pearance depends  upon  the  above-mentioned  proportions  of  the  superior  maxilla,  and  is 
the  more  noticeable,  because  the  supra-orbital  margin  descends  lower  under  a  very  convex 
superciliary  arch,  and  is  less  curved  in  shape,  while,  opposite  to  it,  the  infra-orbital  margin 
also  makes  a  very  prominent  edge.1'5  ....  Antero-posteriorly,  the  orbit  is  somewhat 
deeper  than  in  other  skulls,  and,  on  account  of  the  contracted  entrance  (humilem  introilum) 
appears  to  be  deeper  than  it  really  is. 

"  The  root  of  the  nose,  above  which  the  glabella  projects  considerably,  is  compressed  and 
flat,  and  the  nasal  bones,  but  little  arched,  terminate  in  a  pyriform  aperture.  The  frontal 
process  of  the  upper  maxillary  bone  being  shorter,  and  the  alveolar  process  lower,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  the  body  of  the  upper  maxillary  bone  less  broad  than  usual,  the  space  sur- 
rounded by  the  teeth  is  necessarily  narrower.  The  incisor  teeth  of  the  upper  jaw  are 
seldom  perpendicular,  but  incline  obliquely  forwards,  so  that  their  alveolar  edge,  not  formed 
as  in  other  crania,  at  the  angle  of  the  foramen  incisivum,  merges  gradually  into  the  hard 
palate.  The  peculiar  evolution  of  the  organs  inservient  to  mastication,  gives  rise  to  differ- 
ences even  in  the  skull.     For  the  whole  surface  of  the  temporal  fossa  is  more  exactly  de- 

ro  The  prominence  of  the  malar  bones,  the  narrowness  of  the  orbits,  and  the  squareness 
of  their  margins,  was  also  observed  about  Dorpat,  by  Isenflamm  (Anatomische  Untersuch- 
ungen.  Erlangen,  1822,  pp.  254-6).  C.  Seidlitz  appears  to  have  been  the  first  to  describe 
the  form  of  the  orbits  accurately ;  he  has  attempted  to  show  that  this  form  gave  rise  to  two 
affections,  common  in  this  region  —  trichiasis  and  entropium.  (Disserlatio  lnauguralis  de 
Prcecipuis  Oculorum  Morbis  inter  Eslhonos  obviis  Dorpati  Livonorum,  1821.) 


288  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

fined,  not  only  by  the  semicircular  line  of  the  os  frontis,  hut  also  by  a  very  prominent  crest 
above  the  external  meatus,  into  the  posterior  part  of  which  the  zygomatic  processes  are 
continued.  Moreover,  in  nearly  all  the  Esthonian  skulls,  the  external  pterygoid  processes 
are  very  broad ;  often  the  spinous  process  of  the  sphenoidal  bone  is,  at  the  same  time,  so 

prolonged,  that  it  coalesces  with  the  posterior  margin  of  the  former  process This 

conformation  indicates  a  greater  evolution  of  the  external  pterygoid  muscle  than  in  others 
less  broad.  This  muscle  being  efficient,  the  lateral  motion  of  the  lower  jaw  is  increased,  in 
consequence  of  the  smallness  of  the  condyles  as  compared  with  the  large  glenoid  cavity ; 
hence,  the  crowns  of  the  teeth,  already  worn  down  in  the  young,  are  proofs  of  the  posses- 
sion of  the  most  powerful  organs  for  masticating  vegetable  food.  It  only  remains  to  be 
observed  that,  in  the  lower  jaw,  the  ascending  ramus  is  lower  than  in  skulls  of  the  Cauca- 
sian variety,  the  angle  more  obtuse,  and  the  posterior  part  of  the  body  of  the  jaw  less  broad, 
and  the  anterior  part  higher,  and  the  chin  itself  rounded,  and  rarely  angular." 

Such,  according  to  Dr.  Hueck,  are  the  characters  of  the  Esthonian 
skull  —  characters  which,  he  further  assures  us,  are  more  pronounced 
in  proportion  as  these  people  are  less  mixed  with  others.  He  also 
expresses  a  belief  in  the  possibility  of  tracing  the  Finns  to  their 
primitive  sources,  by  a  careful  study  of  the  heads  found  in  ancient 
sepulchres  of  this  region. 

From  the  foregoing  descriptions  the  reader  will  readily  perceive 
the  differences  between  the  Finnic  and  Mongolic  types  of  skull. 
The  Mongolian  face  is  broad  and  high,  the  cheek-bones  very  robust, 
the  malar  fossa  shallow,  the  nasal  bones  small  and  flat,  teeth  strong 
and  straightly  placed,  bounding  a  large  space ;  the  orbits  are  deep  and 
less  square.  Oblique  palpebral  openings  correspond  to  the  formation 
of  the  facial  bones,  for  the  internal  orbital  process  of  the  frontal  bone 
descends  more  deeply  than  in  the  Caucasian  variety,  and  the  Estho- 
nians  especially,  whence  the  lachrymal  bone  and  the  entrance  to  the 
canal  are  lower  down.  The  internal  canthus  being  adjacent  to  this, 
is  placed  lower;  hence  the  obliquity  of  the  palpebral  opening,  so 
peculiar  to  the  Mongolian.  "We  thus  find  nothing  common  to  the 
Mongolian  type  and  to  the  shape  of  the  Esthonian  skull  except  a 
certain  squareness  of  figure  which  is  not  constant. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  cranial  type  of  the  Laplander  belongs 
to  a  lower  order  than  that  of  the  Finn,  and  that  the  former  race  falls 
properly  within  the  limits  of  the  Arctic  form,  while  the  latter  leans 
decidedly  towards  the  Lido-Germanic  type,  finding  its  relation  to  the 
latter  through  the  Sclavonian  rather  than  the  true  Scandinavian 
types.  But  inferiority  of  form  is  to  some  extent  a  natural  indi- 
cation of  priority  of  existence.  We  are  thus  led  from  cranial  investi- 
gations alone  to  recognize  the  Lapps  as  the  autochthones  of  North- 
western Europe,  who  at  a  very  remote  period  have  been  overlaid  by 
the  encroaching  Finn.  This  opinion  is  countenanced  by  the  follow- 
ing facts.     GrEUER  assures  us  that  the  earliest  historical  accounts  of 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN".  289 

the  Lapps  and  Finns  testify  to  their  diversity  and  primitive  separa- 
tion. Under  the  combined  pressure  of  the  Swedes  and  Norwegians 
on  the  west,  and  the  Finns  on  the  east,  the  Lapponic  area  has,  from 
the  dawn  of  history,  been  a  receding  one.  Lapponic  names  for  places 
are  found  in  Finland,  and,  as  already  observed,  human  bones  more 
like  those  of  the  Laplanders  than  the  Scandinavians  have  been  found 
in  ancient  cemeteries  as  far  south  as  Denmark.  Peter  Hogstrom 
tells  us  that  the  Lapps  maintain  that  their  ancestors  formerly  had 
possession  of  all  Sweden.  We  have  it  upon  historical  record,  that  so 
late  as  the  fifteenth  century  Lapponic  tribes  were  pushed  out  of 
Savolax  and  East  Bothnia  towards  the  north. 

Prof.  S.  Nilsson,  of  Lund,  thinks  that  the  southern  parts  of  Sweden 
were  formerly  connected  with  Denmark  and  Germany,  while  the 
northern  part  of  Scandinavia  was  covered  with  the  sea ;  that  Scania 
received  its  post-diluvian  flora  from  Germany ;  and  that  as  vegeta- 
tion increased,  graminivorous  animals  came  from  the  south,  followed 
by  the  carnivora,  and  finally  by  man,  who  lived  in  the  time  of  the 
Bos  primigenius  and  Ursus  Spelteus.  In  proof  of  the  antiquity  here 
assigned  to  Scandinavian  man,  he  tells  us  that  they  have  in  Lund  a 
skeleton  of  the  Bos  pierced  with  an  arrow,  and  another  of  the  Ursus, 
which  was  found  in  a  peat-bog  in  Scania,  under  a  gravel  or  stone 
deposit,  along  with  implements  of  the  chase.176  From  these  imple- 
ments, he  infers  that  these  aborigines  were  a  savage  race  of  fishers 
and  hunters. 

"The  skulls  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  found  in  these  ancient  barrows  are  short 
(brachy-cephalie  of  Retzius),  "with  prominent  parietal  tubers,  and  broad  and  flattened  occi- 
put.    It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  the  same  form  of  cranium  exists  among  several  very 

1,6  The  reader  will  find  some  highly  interesting  and  curious  speculations  upon  the 
antiquity  of  British  Man,  in  a  paper  entitled.  On  the  Claims  of  the  Gigantic  Irish  Deer  to  be 
considered  as  contemporary  with  Man,  recently  read  (May,  1855),  by  Mr.  H.  Denny,  before 
the  Geological  and  Polytechnic  Society  of  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire.  "  In  my  endeavor 
to  trace  the  Megaceros  down  to  the  human  era,"  says  Mr.  D.,  in  concluding  his  paper,  "I 
am  by  no  means  advocating  the  idea  that  they  have,  as  species,  been  equally  long  inhabi- 
tants of  this  earth.  On  the  contrary,  I  suppose  that  the  last  stragglers  only,  which  escaped 
annihilation  by  physical  changes  and  causes,  may  have  continued  to  exist  down  to  Man's 
first  appearance  on  the  British  Isles ;  and  as  precisely  similar  views  regarding  the  extinction 
of  the  Dinornis  in  New  Zealand  have  been  advocated  by  Dr.  Mantell  in  one  of  his  last  com- 
munications to  the  Geological  Society,  I  shall  make  no  apology  in  concluding  with  his 
remarks  when  speaking  of  the  Moa-beds: — Both  these  ossiferous  deposits,  though  but  of 
yesterday  in  geological  history,  are  of  immense  antiquity  in  relation  to  the  human  inhabi- 
tants of  the  country.  I  believe  that  ages,  ere  the  advent  of  the  Maoris,  New  Zealand  was 
densely  peopled  by  the  stupendous  bipeds  whose  fossil  remains  are  the  sole  indications  of 
their  former  existence.  That  the  last  of  the  species  was  exterminated  by  human  agency, 
like  the  Dodo  and  Solitaire  of  the  Mauritius,  and  the  Gigantic  Elk  of  Ireland,  there  can  be 
no  doubt;  but,  ere  man  began  the  work  of  destruction,  it  is  not  unphilosophical  to  assume 
that  physical  revolutions,  inducing  great  changes  in  the  relative  distribution  of  the  land 

19 


290  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

ancient  people,  such  as  the  Iberians  or  Basques  of  the  Pyrenees,  the  Lapps  and  Samoiedes, 
and  the  Pelasgi,  traces  of  whom  are  still  found  in  Greece. 

"Next  in  succession  to  this  aboriginal  race,  subsisting  by  fishing  and  hunting,  comes 
another  with  a  cranium. of  a  more  lengthened  oval  form,  and  prominent  and  narrow  occiput. 
I  think  this  second  race  to  have  been  of  Gothic  extraction,  to  have  first  commenced  the 
division  of  the  land  for  agricultural  purposes,  and  consequently  to  have  had  bloody  strife 
with  the  former  inhabitants 

"The  third  race  which  has  inhabited  Scandinavia  came  possibly  from  the  North  and 
East,  and  introduced  bronze  into  the  country ;  the  form  of  the  skull  is  very  different  from 
that  of  the  two  former  races.  It  is  larger  than  the  first,  and  broader  than  the  second,  and 
withal  prominent  at  the  sides.  I  consider  this  race  to  have  been  of  Celtic  origin."  The 
fourth,  or  true  Swea  race,  introduced  into  Sweden  weapons  and  instruments  of  iron,  and 
appear  to  have  been  the  immediate  ancestors  of  the  present  Swedes.  With  this  race 
Swedish  history  fairly  begins.1'7 

Prof.  Retzius,  in  the  main,  coincides  with  the  opinion  of  Prof. 
Nilsson.  He  applies  to  the  Lapps  the  term  Turanic,  and  regards 
them  as  the  relics  of  the  true  Scandinavian  aborigines  —  a  people 
who  once  occupied  not  only  the  southern  part  of  Sweden,  but  also 
Denmark,  Great  Britain,  Northern  Germany,  and  France.  He  calls 
the  Turanic  skull,  brachy-cephalic  (short-head),  and  describes  it  as 
short  and  round,  the  occiput  flattened,  and  the  parietal  protuberances 
quite  prominent.178 

A  cast  of  a  Norwegian  skull  in  the  Mortonian  Collection  (No. 
1260),  is  remarkable  for  its  great  size.  It  belongs  to  the  dolicho- 
cephalic variety  of  Retzius.  The  fronto-parietal  convexity  is  regular 
from  side  to  side.  The  occipital  region  as  a  whole  is  quite  promi- 
nent; but  the  basal  portion  of  the  occiput  is  fiat  and  parallel  with 
the  horizon  when  the  head  rests  squarely  upon  the  lower  jaw.  The 
glabella,  superciliary  ridges,  and  external  angular  processes  of  the 
os  frontis  are  very  rough  and  prominent,  overhanging  the  orbits  and 
inter-orbital  space  in  such  a  manner  as  to  give  a  very  harsh  and  for- 
bidding expression  to  the  face.  The  semi-circular  ridges  passing 
back  from  the  external  angular  process,  are  quite  elevated  and  sharp. 
The  nasal  bones  are  high  and  rather  sharp  at  the  line  of  junction ; 
orbits  capacious ;  malar  bones  of  moderate  size,  and  flattened  antero- 
laterally ;  superior  maxilla  rather  small  in  comparison  with  the  infe- 
rior, which  is  quite  large,  and  much  flared  out  at  the  angles.  The 
facial  angle  is  good,  and  the  whole  head  strongly  marked. 

According  to  Prof.  Retzius,  the  Swedish  cranium,  as  seen  from 
above,  presents  an  oval  figure.     Its  greatest  breadth  is  to  its  greatest 

and  water  in  the  South  Pacific  Ocean,  may  have  so  circumscribed  the  geographical  limits 
of  the  Dinornis  and  Palapteryx,  as  to  produce  conditions  that  tended  to  diminish  their 
numbers  preparatory  to  their  final  annihilation." 

1,7  Report  of  the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  for  1847,  p.  31. 

178  See  Muller's  Archives,  for  1849   p.  575. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  291 

length  as  1000  :  773.  The  external  occipital  protuberance  is  remark- 
ably prominent,  so  that  the  external  auditory  meatus  appears  to  occupy 
a  more  advanced  position  than  is  really  the  case.  A  plane  passing 
through  the  two  meati,  perpendicular  to  the  long  diameter  of  the 
cranium,  cuts  this  diameter  nearly  in  the  middle.  The  face  is  long, 
but  not  very  prominent,  the  inferior  jaw  well  pronounced  and  massive, 
while  the  inter-orbital  space  is  large,  as  is  generally  the  case  with  the 
Northern  races  of  men.  From  the  skulls  found  in  ancient  tombs, 
we  may  infer  that  this  form  has  not  varied  for  at  least  1000  years."9 

The  Swedish  form  of  skull,  judging  from  the  specimens  in  Mor- 
ton's Collection,  bears  a  family  resemblance  to  the  Norwegian,  and 
in  several  respects  is  not  unlike  the  Anglo-Saxon  head  figured  in 
the  first  decade  of  Crania  Britannica.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon,  how- 
ever, the  chin  is  more  acuminated,  and  the  maxillary  rami  longer. 
The  chief  points  of  resemblance  about  the  calvaria,  are  the  slightly 
elevated  forehead,  the  rather  flattened  vertex,  and  the  inclination  of 
the  parietalia  downwards  and  backwards  towards  the  occiput.  This 
latter  feature  is  also  possessed  by  the  Norwegian  cast  referred  to 
above. 

In  the  skull  of  a  Swedish  woman  of  the  thirteenth  century  (No. 
1249  of  the  Mortonian  Collection),  the  singularly  protuberant  occi- 
put projects  far  behind  the  foramen  magnum.  The  skulls  of  an 
ancient  Ostrogoth  (No.  1255),  and  two  ancient  Cimbi'ic  Swedes  (Nos. 
1550  and  1532),  evidently  belong  to  the  same  peculiar  type.  These 
four  heads  resemble  each  other  as  strongly  as  they  differ  from  the 
remaining  Swedes,  Finns,  Germans,  and  Kelts  in  the  Collection. 
They  call  to  mind  the  kumbe-kephalse,  or  boat-shaped  skulls  of 
Wilson.  No.  1362,  a  cast  of  an  ancient  Cimbrian  skull,  from  the 
Danish  Island  of  Moen,  presents  the  same  elongated  form.  It  differs 
from  the  four  preceding  skulls  in  being  larger,  more  massive,  and 
broader  in  the  forehead. 

Nos.  117, 1258,  and  1488  possess  the  true  Swedish  form  as  described 
above. 

Two  Swedo-Finland  skulls  (Nos.  1545  and  1546)  —  marked  in  my 
manuscript  catalogue  as  appertaining  to  "  descendants  of  colonists 
who  settled  in  Finland  in  the  most  remote  times"  —  are  broader, 
more  angular,  and  less  oval  than  the  true  Swedish  form.  The  hori- 
zontal portion  of  the  occiput  is  quite  flat,  and  the  occipital  protube- 
rance prominent. 

Three  Sudermanland  Swedes  have  the  same  general  form.  Three 
Swedish  Finns  (mixed  race)  have  a  more  squarely  globular,  and  less 

1,9  Ueber  die  Schadelformen  der  Nordbewohner  in  Miiller's  Archiv.,  1845. 


292  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

oval  cranium  than  the  true  Swedes.  In  the  skull  of  a  Turannic 
Swede  (No.  121)  the  posterior  region  of  the  calvaria  is  broader,  and 
does  not  slope  away  so  much.  In  general  configuration  this  cranium 
approaches  the  brachy-cephalic  class  of  Rbtzius. 

A  Danish  skull  figured  by  Nilsson,180  after  Eschricht,  of  Copen- 
hagen, resembles  the  Lapponic  much  more  than  the  Norwegian  or 
Swedish  forms  described  above. 

The  cranial  types  of  Great  Britain  —  the  "islands  set  in  the  sea" 
—  next  claim  our  attention. 

The  ethnology  of  the  British  Isles  appears  to  be  very  closely  con- 
nected with  that  of  Scandinavia.  According  to  Prof.  Nilsson,  the 
ancient  inhabitants  of  Britain  are  identical  with  those  of  Norway 
and  Sweden.181  Reference  to  the  views  put  forth  by  different  ethno- 
graphers and  archeologues  reveals  to  us  a  remarkable  degree  of 
uncertainty  respecting  the  cranial  forms  and  general  physical  charac- 
ters of  the  primitive  Britons. 

"It  seems  strange,"  says  Dr.  Prichard,  "that  such  a  subject  as  the  physical  character 
of  the  Celtic  race  should  have  been  made  a  theme  of  controversy.  Yet  this  has  happened, 
and  the  dispute  has  turned,  not  only  on  the  question,  what  characteristic  traits  belonged  to 
the  ancient  Celtas,  but,  what  are  those  of  their  descendants,  the  Welsh  and  the  Scottish 
Gael?"182  Again, he  says — "The  skulls  found  in  old  burial-places  in  Britain,  which  I  have 
been  enabled  to  examine,  differ  materially  from  the  Grecian  model.  The  amplitude  of  the 
anterior  parts  of  the  cranium  is  very  much  less,  giving  a  comparatively  small  space  for  the 
anterior  lobes  of  the  brain.  In  this  particular,  the  ancient  inhabitants  of  Britain  appear 
to  have  differed  very  considerably  from  the  present.  The  latter,  either  as  the  result  of  many 
ages  of  greater  intellectual  cultivation,  or  from  some  other  cause,  have,  as  I  am  persuaded, 
much  more  capacious  brain-cases  than  their  forefathers."183  In  another  place,  he  asks  — 
"  Was  there  anything  peculiar  in  the  conformation  of  the  head  in  the  British  and  Gaulish 
races  ?  I  do  not  remember  that  any  peculiarity  of  features  has  been  observed  by  Roman 
writers  in  either  Gauls  or  Britons.  There  are  probably  in  existence  sufficient  means  for 
deciding  this  inquiry,  in  the  skulls  found  in  old  British  cairns,  or  places  of  sepulture.  I 
have  seen  about  half-a-dozen  skulls,  found  in  different  parts  of  England,  in  situations  which 
rendered  it  highly  probable  that  they  belonged  to  ancient  Britons.  All  these  partook  of  one 
striking  characteristic,  viz.,  a  remarkable  narrowness  of  the  forehead,  compared  with  the 
occiput,  giving  a  very  small  space  for  the  anterior  lobes  of  the  brain,  and  allowing  room  for 
a  large  development  of  the  posterior  lobes.  There  are  some  modern  English  and  Welsh 
heads  to  be  seen  of  a  similar  form,  but  they  are  not  numerous.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  such 
specimens  of  the  craniology  of  our  ancestors  will  not  be  suffered  to  fall  into  decay."184 

The  hope  here  expressed,  I  may  say,  en  passant,  has  at  length  met 
with  an  able  response,  in  the  Crania  Britannica  of  Messrs.  Davis 

180  Skandinaviska  Nordens  Urinvfinare,  ett  forsb'k  i  comparativa  Ethnographien  af  S.  Nils- 
son,  Phil.  Dr.,  &c.     Christianstad,  1838.     I.  H'aftel,  Plate  D,  Fig.  10. 

181  See  his  Letter  to  Dr.  Davis,  quoted  in  Crania  Britannica,  p.  17. 

182  Researches  into  the  Physical  History  of  Mankind,  3d  edition,  vol.  III.  London,  1841, 
p.  189. 

las  Ibid,  3d  edit.,  vol.  I.,  p.  305.  18*  Ibid,  III.,  199. 


OF     THE     RACES    OF     MEN.  293 

and  Thurnam,  who  have  spiritedly  undertaken  to  "rescue  and  perpe- 
tuate the  faithful  lineaments  of  a  sufficient  number  of  the  skulls  of 
the  ancient  races  of  Britain  to  preserve  authentic  data  for  the 
future." 

Mr.  Wilde,  a  distinguished  antiquary,  calls  the  primitive  Irish — those  who,  in  the  remo- 
test times,  built  the  pyramidal  sepulchres  with  stone  passages —  "globular-headed."  The 
skulls  found  in  the  "Cromlechs,"  or  sepulchral  mounds  of  a  later  date,  he  assures  us  are 
"  chiefly  characterized  by  their  extreme  length  from  before  backwards,  or  what  is  technically 
termed  their  antero-posterior  diameter,  and  the  flatness  of  their  sides;  and  in  this,  and  in 
most  other  respects,  they  correspond  with  the  second  form  of  head  discovered  in  the  Danish 
sepulchres."  They  also  "present  the  same  marked  characters  in  their  facial  aspect,  and 
the  projecting  occiput  and  prominent  frontal  sinuses,  as  the  Danish"  skulls.  "  The  nose, 
in  common  with  all  the  truly  Irish  heads  I  have  examined,  presents  the  most  marked  pecu- 
liarities, and  evidently  must  have  been  very  prominent,  or  what  is  usually  termed  aquiline. 
With  this  we  have  evidence  of  the  teeth  slightly  projecting,  and  the  chin  square,  well  marked, 
and  also  prominent ;  so  that,  on  the  whole,  this  race  must  have  possessed  peculiarly  well- 
marked  features,  and  an  intelligent  physiognomy.  The  forehead  is  low,  but  not  retreating. 
The  molar  teeth  are  remarkably  ground  down  upon  their  crowns,  and  the  attachments  of 

the  temporal  muscles  are  exceedingly  well  marked Now,  we  find  similar  conditions 

of  head  still  existing  among  the  modern  inhabitants  of  this  country,  particularly  beyond  the 
Shannon,  towards  the  west,  where  the  dark  or  Fir-Bolg  race  may  still  be  traced,  as  distinct 
from  the  more  globular-headed,  light-eyed,  fair-haired  Celtic  people,  who  lie  to  the  north- 
east of  that  river."  In  the  "  Kistaeven,"  a  still  later  form  of  the  ancient  funereal  recep- 
tacles, "  the  skull  is  much  better  proportioned,  higher,  more  globular,  and,  in  every  respect, 
approaching  more  to  the  highest  forms  of  the  Indo-European  variety  of  the  Caucasian 
race."185 

From  these  interesting  researches  of  Mr.  Wilde,  it  appears  quite 
evident  that  Ireland  has,  at  different  and  distant  periods,  been  peopled 
by  at  least  two,  if  not  three,  distinct  races,  of  which  the  first  was 
characterized  by  a  short,  and  the  second  by  an  elongated  form  of 
skull ;  thus  corresponding  remarkably,  in  physical  character  and 
order  of  succession,  to  the  early  inhabitants  of  Scandinavia. 

Prof.  Daniel  Wilson,  the  learned  general  editor  of  the  Canadian 
Journal,  has  recently  demonstrated  the  existence  in  Scotland  of  two 
distinct  primitive  races,  prior  to  the  appearance  of  the  true  Celtse. 
He  thus  refers  to  the  crania  of  these  ancient  people : 

"  Fortunately,  a  few  skulls  from  Scottish  tumuli  and  cists  are  preserved  in  the  Museums 
of  the  Scottish  Antiquaries  and  of  the  Edinburgh  Phrenological  Society.  A  comparison 
of  these  with  the  specimens  of  crania  drawn  by  Dr.  Thurnam  from  examples  found  in  an 
ancient  tumular  cemetery  at  Lamel  Hill,  near  York,  believed  to  be  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
period,  abundantly  proves  an  essential  difference  of  races.186  The  latter,  though  belonging 
to  the  superior  or  dolicho-kephalic  type,  are  small,  very  poorly  developed,  low  and  narrow 
in  the  forehead,  and  pyramidal  in  form.  A  striking  feature  of  one  type  of  crania  from  the 
Scottish  barrows  is  a  square  compact  form 

185  Lecture  on  the  Ethnology  of  the  Ancient  Irish.     By  W.  R.  Wilde,  1844. 
™  Natural  History  of  Man,  p.  193. 


294 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


"No.  7  [Figs.  22  and  23]  was  obtained  from  a  cist  discovered  under  a  large  cairn  at 
Nether  Urquhart,  Fifeshire,  in  1835.     An  account  of  the  opening  of  several  cairns  and 


Fig.  22. 


Fig.  23. 


'No.  7.     Nethek  TTrqtjhart  Cairn.' 


tumuli  in  the  same  district  is  given  by  Lieutenant-Colonel  Miller,  in  his  '  Inquiry  respecting 
the  Site  of  the  Battle  of  Mons  Grampius.' 187  Some  of  them  contained  urns  and  burnt  bones, 
ornaments  of  jet  and  shale,  and  the  like  early  relics,  while  in  others  were  found  implements 
or  weapons  of  iron.  It  is  selected  here  as  another  example  of  the  same  class  of  crania.  .  .  . 
The  whole  of  these,  more  or  less,  nearly  agree  with  the  lengthened  oval  form  described  by 
Prof.  Nilsson  as  the  second  race  of  the  Scandinavian  tumuli.  They  have  mostly  a  singu- 
larly narrow  and  elongated  occiput ;  and  with  their  comparatively  low  and  narrow  fore- 
head, might  not  inaptly  be  described  by  the  familiar  term  boat-shaped.  It  is  probable  that 
further  investigation  will  establish  this  as  the  type  of  a  primitive,  if  not  of  the  primeval 
native  race.  Though  they  approach  in  form  to  a  superior  type,  falling  under  the  first  or 
dolicho-kephalic  class  of  Prof.  Retzius's  arrangement,  their  capacity  is  generally  small, 
and  their  development,  for  the  most  part,  poor;  so  that  there  is  nothing  in  their  cranial 
characteristics  inconsistent  with  such  evidence  as  seems  to  assign  to  them  the  rude  arts 

and  extremely  limited  knowledge  of  the  British  Stone  Period 

"The  skull,  of  which  the  measurements  are  given  in  No.  10  [Figs.  24  and  25],  is  the 
same  here  referred  to,  presented  to  the  Phrenological  Museum  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Liddell.     It 


Fig.  24, 


Fig.  25. 


"No.  10.     Old  Steeple,  Montrose." 

is  a  very  striking  example  of  the  British  brachy-kephalic  type ;  square  and  compact  in 
form,  broad  and  short,  but  well  balanced,  and  with  a  good  frontal  development.  It  no 
doubt  pertained  to  some  primitive  chief,  or  arch-priest,  sage,  it  may  be,  in  council,  and 
brave  in  war.  The  site  of  his  place  of  sepulture  has  obviously  been  chosen  for  the  same 
reasons  which  led  to  its  selection  at  a  later  period  for  the  erection  of  the  belfry  and  beacon- 


187  Archseol.,  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  43,  44. 


OF     THE     RACES    OF     MEN.  295 

tower  of  the  old  burgh.  It  is  the  most  elevated  spot  in  the  neighborhood,  and  here  his  cist 
had  been  laid,  and  the  memorial  mound  piled  over  it,  -which  doubtless  remained  untouched 
so  long  as  his  memory  was  cherished  in  the  traditions  of  his  people 

"  Few  as  these  examples  are,  they  will  probably  be  found,  on  further  investigation,  to 
belong  to  a  race  entirely  distinct  from  those  previously  described.  They  correspond  very 
nearly  to  the  brachy-kephalic  crania  of  the  supposed  primeval  race  of  Scandinavia,  described 
by  Prof.  Nilsson  as  short,  with  prominent  parietal  tubers,  and  broad  and  flattened  occiput. 
In  frontal  development,  however,  they  are  decidedly  superior  to  the  previous  class  of  crania, 
and  such  evidence  as  we  possess  seems  to  point  to  a  very  different  succession  of  races  to 
that  which  Scandinavian  ethnologists  now  recognize  in  the  primitive  history  of  the  north 
of  Europe 

"  So  far  as  appears  from  the  table  of  measurements,  the  following  laws  would  seem  to 
be  indicated :  ■ —  In  the  primitive  or  elongated  dolicho-kephalic  type,  for  which  the  distinc- 
tive title  of  kumbe-kephalic  is  here  suggested  —  the  parietal  diameter  is  remarkably  small, 
being  frequently  exceeded  by  the  vertical  diameter ;  in  the  second  or  brachy-kephalic  class, 
the  parietal  diameter  is  the  greater  of  the  two ;  in  the  Celtic  crania  they  are  nearly  equal ; 
and  in  the  medieval  or  true  dolicho-kephalic  heads,  the  parietal  diameter  is  again  found 
decidedly  in  excess  ;  while  the  preponderance  or  deficiency  of  the  longitudinal  in  its  rela- 
tive proportion  to  the  other  diameters,  furnishes  the  most  characteristic  features  referred 
to  in  the  classification  of  the  kumbe-kephalic,  brachy-kephalic,  Celtic,  and  dolicho-kephalic 
types.  Not  the  least  interesting  indications  which  these  results  afford,  both  to  the  ethno- 
logist and  the  archaeologist,  are  the  evidences  of  native  primitive  races  in  Scotland  prior  to 
the  intrusion  of  the  Celtse ;  and  also  the  probability  of  these  races  having  succeeded  each 
other  in  a  different  order  from  the  primitive  colonists  of  Scandinavia.  Of  the  former  fact, 
viz.,  the  existence  of  primitive  races  prior  to  the  Celta3,  I  think  no  doubt  can  be  now  enter- 
tained. Of  the  order  of  their  succession,  and  their  exact  share  in  the  changes  and  progressive 
development  of  the  native  arts  which  the  archaeologist  detects,  we  still  stand  in  need  of  fur- 
ther proof. 

"  The  peculiar  characteristic  of  the  primeval  Scottish  type  appears  rather  to  be  a  narrow 
prolongation  of  the  occiput  in  the  region  of  the  cerebellum,  suggesting  the  term  already- 
applied  to  them  of  boat-shaped,  and  for  which  the  name  of  kumbe-kephalce  may  perhaps  be 
conveniently  employed  to  distinguish  them  from  the  higher  type  with  which  they  are  other- 
wise apt  to  be  confounded 

"  The  peculiarity  in  the  teeth  of  certain  classes  of  ancient  crania  above  referred  to  is  of 
very  general  application,  and  has  been  observed  as  common  even  among  British  sailors. 
The  cause  is  obvious,  resulting  from  the  similarity  of  food  in  both  cases.  The  old  Briton 
of  the  Anglo-Eoman  period,  and  the  Saxon  both  of  England  and  the  Scottish  Lothians,  had 
lived  to  a  great  extent  on  barley-bread,  oaten  cakes,  parched  peas,  or  the  like  fare,  pro- 
ducing the  same  results  on  his  teeth  as  the  hard  sea-biscuit  does  on  those  of  the  British 
sailor.  Such,  however,  is  not  generally  the  case,  and  in  no  instance,  indeed,  to  the  same 
extent  in  the  skulls  found  in  the  earlier  British  tumuli.  In  the  Scottish  examples  described 
above,  the  teeth  are  mostly  very  perfect,  and  their  crowns  not  at  all  worn  down 

"  The  inferences  to  be  drawn  from  such  a  comparison  are  of  considerable  value  in  the 
indications  they  afford  of  the  domestic  habits  and  social  life  of  a  race,  the  last  survivor  of 
which  has  mouldered  underneath  his  green  tumulus,  perchance  for  centuries  before  the 
era  of  our  earliest  authentic  chronicles.  As  a  means  of  comparison  this  characteristic 
appearance  of  the  teeth  manifestly  furnishes  one  means  of  discriminating  between  an  early 
and  a  still  earlier,  if  not  primeval  period,  and  though  not  in  itself  conclusive,  it  may  be 
found  of  considerable  value  when  taken  in  connection  with  the  other  and  still  more  obvious 
peculiarities  of  the  crania  of  the  earliest  barrows.  We  perceive  from  it,  at  least,  that  a 
very  decided  change  took  place  in  the  common  food  of  the  country,  from  the  period  when 
the  native  Briton  of  the  primeval  period  pursued  the  chase  with  the  flint  lance  and  arrow, 
and  the  spear  of  deer's  horn,  to  that  comparatively  recent  period  when  the  Saxon  marauders 


296  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

began  to  effect  settlements  and  build  houses  on  the  scenes  where  they  had  ravaged  the  vil- 
lages of  the  older  British  natives.     The  first  class,  we  may  infer,  attempted  little  cultivation 

of  the  soil 

"  Viewing  Archaeology  as  one  of  the  most  essential  means  for  the  elucidation  of  primitive 
history,  it  has  been  employed  here  chiefly  in  an  attempt  to  trace  out  the  annals  of  our 
country  prior  to  that  comparatively  recent  medieval  period  at  which  the  boldest  of  our  his- 
torians have  heretofore  ventured  to  begin.  The  researches  of  the  ethnologist  carry  us  back 
somewhat  beyond  that  epoch,  and  confirm  many  of  those  conclusions,  especially  in  relation 
to  the  close  affinity  between  the  native  arts  and  Celtic  races  of  Scotland  and  Ireland,  at 
which  we  have  arrived  by  means  of  archasological  evidence.  .  .  .  But  we  have  found  from 
many  independent  sources  of  evidence,  that  the  primeval  history  of  Britain  must  be  sought 
for  in  the  annals  of  older  races  than  the  Celtoe,  and  in  the  remains  of  a  people  of  whom  we 
have  as  yet  no  reason  to  believe  that  any  philological  traces  are  discoverable,  though  they 
probably  do  exist  mingled  with  later  dialects,  and  especially  in  the  topographical  nomen- 
clature, adopted  and  modified,  but  in  all  likelihood  not  entirely  superseded  by  later  colonists. 
With  the  earliest  intelligible  indices  of  that  primeval  colonization  of  the  British  Isles  our 
archfeological  records  begin,  mingling  their  dim  historic  annals  with  the  last  giant  traces 
of  elder  worlds ;  and,  as  an  essentially  independent  element  of  historical  research,  they 
terminate  at  the  point  where  the  isolation  of  Scotland  ceases  by  its  being  embraced  into 
the  unity  of  medieval  Christendom." 188 

Mr.  Bateman,  who  has  carefully  examined  the  ancient  barrows 
of  North  Derbyshire,  describes  the  skulls  found  in  the  oldest  of 
these  —  known  as  the  Chambered  Barrows  — as  being  elongated 
and  boat-shaped  (kumbe-kephalic  form  of  "Wilson).  The  crania 
of  the  succeeding  two  varieties  of  barrows  are  of  the  brachy- 
cephalic  type,  round  and  short,  with  prominent  parietalia.  In  the 
barrows  of  the  "iron  age" — the  most  recent — he  found  the  pre- 
vailing form  to  approximate  the  oval  heads  of  the  modern  inhabi- 
tants of  Derbyshire.189 

From  the  foregoing  statements,  a  remarkable  fact  becomes  evident. 
"While  Retzius,  ISTilsson,  Eschricht,  and  Wilde  are  remarkably  har- 
monious in  ascribing  the  brachy-cephalic  type  to  the  earliest  or  Stone 
Period  in  Scandinavia,  Denmark,  and  Ireland,  we  find  Wilson  and 
Bateman  equally  accordant  in  considering  the  kumbe-kephalse  as  the 
first  men  who  trod  the  virgin  soil  of  Caledonia  and  England.  In  the 
present  state  of  antiquarian  research,  then,  we  are  forced  to  conclude 
that  the  primitive  inhabitants  of  Britain  are  identical  with  those  of 
Sweden  and  Denmark,  but  that  in  different  parts  of  these  countries 
the  order  of  their  sequence  has  varied. 

Fig.  26  (see  next  page),  reduced  from  a  magnificent  life-size  litho- 
graph in  Crania  Britannica,  represents  a  strongly-marked  aboriginal 
British  skull  of  the  earliest  period.  "  It  was  disinterred  from  the 
lowermost  cist  of  a  howl-shaped  Barrow  on  Ballidon  Moor."     It 

!8S  The  Archaeology  and  Prehistoric  Annals  of  Scotland ;  Edinb.  1851 ;  pp.  163-187,  695-6. 
189  Journal  of  the  British  Archaeological  Society,  vol.  VII. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


297 


belongs  to  the  brachy-cephalre  of  Ret- 
zius,  and  is  regarded  by  Dr.  Davis, 

who  gives  us  the  following  description 
of  it,  as  a  typical  example  of  the  ancient 
British  form. 

"  This  cranium  possesses  a  rugged  face,  the 
hones  of  which  are  rough,  angular,  especially  the 
lower  jaw,  and  deeply  impressed  by  strong  mus- 
cular action.  The  space  enclosed  by  the  zygo- 
matic arch  is  rather  large.  It  is  the  skull  of  a 
man  of  probably  about  forty-five  years  of  age. 
The  teeth,  which  are  not  remarkably  large,  must 

have  been  complete  at  the  period   of  interment,  Ancient  Bkiton. 

except  the  two  last  molars  of  the  upper  jaw  on  the 

left  side,  which  had  previously  perished  by  caries,  their  alveoli  being  wholly  absorbed. 
Some  of  the  molars  still  retain  a  thick  coating  of  tartar;  and  the  teeth  altogether  indicate 
the  severe  service  to  which  they  were  subjected  during  life,  for  the  crowns  of  almost  all  are 
worn  down  to  a  level  surface,  by  the  mastication  of  hard  substances.  The  nasal  bones, 
which  had  been  fractured  obliquely  across  the  centre  during  the  life  of  this  primitive  hun- 
ter, possibly  in  some  encounter  of  the  chase,  and  had  united  perfectly,  with  a  slight  bend 
to  the  right,  are  very  prominent.  The  opening  of  the  nostrils,  moderate  in  size,  is  just  an 
inch  in  diameter.  The  frontal  sinuses  are  large,  and  project  considerably  over  the  nose. 
The  frontal  bone  is  not  particularly  remarkable  either  for  its  arched  or  receding  form,  but 
inclines  to  the  latter.  The  parietal  bones  are  regular,  and  do  not  present  much  lateral 
prominency.  The  occipital  is  somewhat  full  above  the  protuberance,  which  itself  is 
strongly  marked.  The  point  of  the  chin  is  hollowed  out,  or  depressed,  in  the  middle,  a 
not  uncommon  feature  of  the  British  skull,  which  may  perhaps  be  taken  as  an  indication 
of  a  dimple,  a  mark  of  beauty  in  the  other  sex.  The  profile  of  the  calvarium  presents  a 
pretty  uniform  curvature,  interrupted  by  a  slight  rising  in  the  middle  of  the  parietal  bones, 
and  the  occipital  protuberance.  The  outline  of  the  vertical  aspect  is  a  tolerably  regular 
oval.  The  entire  cranium  is  of  moderate  density.  ...  Its  most  striking  peculiarities  are 
the  rude  character  of  the  face,  greatly  heightened  by  the  prominent  frontal  sinuses,  and 
its  moderate  dimensions.  It  seems  to  have  belonged  to  one  whose  struggle  for  life  was 
severe,  to  conquer  the  denizens  of  the  forest  his  chief  skill,  and  whose  food  consisted  of 
crude  and  coarse  articles.  Still  there  remain  irrefragable  evidences,  even  at  this  distant 
day,  that  his  strife  was  a  successful  one,  and  that  he  became  the  lord  of  the  wilderness  ',' 

An  ancient  British  skull  (Fig.  27), 
from  a  chambered  tumulus  at  Uley, 
Gloucestershire,  figured  and  de- 
scribed in  Crania  Britannica,  af- 
fords a  good  idea  of  the  dolicho-ce- 
phalic  or  long-headed  form  above 
referred  to. 


It  "is  the  skull  of  a  man  of  probably  not  less 
than  sixty-five.  The  sutures  are  more  or  less 
grown  together,  and,  in  many  places,  completely 
obliterated.  The  cranium  is  of  great  thickness, 
especially  in  the  upper  part  of  the  calvarium ; 
the  parietal  bones,  in  the  situation  of  the  tubers, 


Ancient  British  (from  Uley). 


298  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

being  about  four-tenths  of  an  inch  in  thickness,  and  the  frontal  bone,  around  the  eminences, 
not  less  than  half  an  inch.  The  skull  is  of  large  capacity,  and  is  remarkable  for  its  length  in 
proportion  to  its  breadth,  belonging  decidedly  to  the  dolicho-cephalic  class  of  Retzius.  The 
form  is  slightly  deficient  in  symmetry.  The  forehead  is  narrow,  contracted,  and  rather 
receding,  but  not  low ;  a  sort  of  central  ridge  is  to  be  traced  along  the  summit  of  the  cra- 
nium, which  is  most  marked  in  front  of  the  coronal  suture,  and  falls  away  to  a  decidedly 
flat  surface  above  each  temporal  ridge.  The  very  pyramidal  aspect  thus  given  to  the  front 
view  of  the  skull,  is  well  shown  in  our  figure.  The' parietal  tubers  are  moderately  promi- 
nent. The  occiput  is  full,  prominent  and  rounded,  and  presents  a  strongly-marked  trans- 
verse ridge.  The  squamous  and  mastoid  portions  of  the  temporal  bones  are  rather  small ; 
the  external  auditory  openings  are  situated  farther  than  usual  within  the  posterior  half  of 
the  skull.  The  frontal  sinuses  are  very  marked,  and  the  glabella  moderately  prominent ; 
the  nasal  bones,  of  moderate  size,  project  rather  abruptly.  The  insertions  of  the  muscles 
of  mastication  are  strongly  marked,  but  neither  the  upper  nor  lower  jaw  is  so  large,  rugged, 
or  angular  as  is  often  the  case  in  skulls  from  ancient  British  tumuli.  The  malar  bones  are 
rather  small,  and  the  zygomata,  though  long,  are  not  particularly  prominent.  The  ascending 
branch  of  the  lower  jaw  forms  a  somewhat  obtuse  angle  with  the  body  of  that  bone ;  the 
chin  is  poorly  developed ;  the  alveolar  processes  are  short  and  small.  In  both  jaws,  most 
of  the  incisor  and  canine  teeth  are  wanting,  but  have  evidently  fallen  out  since  death.  The 
molars  and  several  of  the  bicuspids  remain  in  their  sockets.  All  the  teeth  are  remarkably 
worn  down,  and  the  molars,  especially  those  of  the  lower  jaw,  have  almost  entirely  lost  their 
crowns ;  indeed,  as  respects  the  lower  first  molars,  nothing  but  the  fangs  remain,  round 
which  abscesses  had  formed,  leading  to  absorption  and  the  formation  of  cavities  in  the 
alveolar  process.  The  worn  surfaces  of  the  teeth  are  not  flat  and  horizontal,  but  slope  away 
obliquely,  from  without  inwards,  there  being  some  tendency  to  concavity  in  the  surfaces  of 
the  lower,  and  to  convexity  in  those  of  the  upper  teeth.  The  former  are  more  worn  on  the 
outer,  the  latter  on  the  inner  edge.  Altogether,  the  condition  is  such  as  we  must  attribute 
to  a  rude  people,  subsisting  in  great  measure  on  the  products  of  the  chase  and  other  animal 
food — ill-provided  with  implements  for  its  division,  and  bestowing  little  care  on  its  prepara- 
tion— rather  than  to  an  agricultural  tribe,  living  chiefly  on  corn  and  fruits.  Such,  we  have 
reason  to  believe,  was  the  condition  of  the  early  British  tribes.190  The  state  of  these,  at 
least,  contrasts  decidedly  with  that  observed  in  Anglo-Saxon  crania,  in  which,  though  the 
crowns  of  the  teeth  are  often  much  reduced  by  attrition,  the  worn  surfaces  are,  for  the  most 
part,  remarkably  horizontal." 

In  the  same  work,  the  reader  will  find  a  well-executed  lithograph  of 
an  Anglo-Saxon  skull,  which  Dr.  Thuknam  is  inclined  to  consider  as 
belonging  to  the  "  lower  rather  than  the  upper  rank  of  "West  Saxon 
settlers." 

"  The  general  form  of  the  skull,  viewed  vertically,"  says  Dr.  T.,  "  is  an  irregular  length- 
ened oval,  so  that  it  belongs  to  the  dolicho-cephalic  class,  but  is  not  a  well-marked  example 
of  that  form.  The  general  outline  is  smooth  and  gently  undulating ;  the  forehead  is  poorly- 
developed,  being  narrow,  and  but  moderately  elevated.  The  parietal  eminences  are  tolerably 
full  and  prominent.  The  temporal  bones,  and  especially  the  mastoid  processes,  are  small. 
The  occipital  bone  is  full  and  rounded,  and  has  a  considerable  projection  posteriorly.  The 
frontal  sinuses  are  slightly  marked ;  the  nasal  bones  small,  narrow,  and  but  little  recurved. 
The  bones  of  the  face  are  small,  the  malar  bones  slightly  prominent.    The  alveolar  processes 

190  Caesar's  words  are,  "  Interiores  plerique  frumenta  non  serunt,  sed  lacte  et  came  vivunt, 
pellibusque  sunt  vestiti."  Lib.  V.,  c.  14.  Two  or  three  centuries  later,  according  to  Dion 
Cassius,  the  condition  of  the  northern  Britons  was  similar;  the  Caledonians  and  Meatae  had 
still  no  ploughed  lands,  but  lived  by  pasturage  and  the  chase.     Xiphilon,  lib.  xxv.,  c.  12. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  299 

of  the  superior  maxillary  bones  (premaxiltaries)  are  prominent,  and  deviate  so  considerably 
from  the  upright  form,  as  to  place  the  skull  rather  in  the  prognathic  than  the  orthognathic 
class.  The  ramus  of  the  lower  jaw  forms  an  obtuse  angle  with  the  body  of  this  bone.  The 
chin  is  moderately  full ." 

The  so-called  Anglo-Saxon  race — a  term  which,  for  several  reasons, 
ought  to  be  discarded  from  ethnological  nomenclature — is  represented 
in  the  Mortonian  collection  by  four  skulls.  No.  80 — the  skull  of  an 
English  convict,  named  Gwillym,  —  belongs  to  the  dolicho-cephalic 
form,  but  is  not  strictly  oval,  being  flattened  posteriorly.  In  general 
configuration,  it  resembles  the  Northern  or  Gothic  style  of  head. 
The  face  bears  the  Finnic  stamp.  No.  539  —  the  skull  of  James 
Moran,  an  Englishman,  executed  at  Philadelphia  for  piracy  and 
murder  —  is  long,  fiat  on  the  top,  and  broad  between  the  parietal 
bones.  The  posterior  portion  of  the  occiput  is  prominent,  the  basal 
surface  is  flat.  The  face  resembles  that  of  Nos.  1063  and  1064  — 
Germans  of  Tubingen — while  the  calvaria  approaches,  in  its  general 
outline,  the  kumbe-kephalic  form  above  alluded  to.  No.  991  —  an 
English  soldier  —  belongs  decidedly  to  the  Cimbric  type,  briefly  re- 
ferred to  on  p.  291.  No.  59 — the  skull  of  Pierce,  a  convict  and  can- 
nibal —  is  long  and  strictly  oval.     It  resembles  the  Cimbric  type. 

The  Anglo-American  Pace  —  another  very  objectionable  term, 
which,  as  applied  to  our  heterogeneous  population,  means  everything 
and  nothing  —  has  but  eight  representatives  in  Morton's  collection. 
Nos.  7  and  98  possess  the  angularly-round  Germanic  form.  No.  24 
—  a  woman,  setat.  26  years  —  is  intermediate  in  form  between  the 
German  and  Swedish  types.  No.  552  —  a  man,  setat.  30  years  — 
resembles  the  Norwegian  described  on  page  290.  No.  889  —  a  man, 
setat.  40  years — resembles  552  in  the  shape  of  the  calvaria,  but  has  a 
smaller  face  and  less  massive  lower  jaw.  No.  1108 — a  male  skull — 
bears  the  Northern  or  Gothic  form ;  the  face  resembles  that  of  the 
Tubingen  Germans.191 

The  Anglo-Saxon  race,  according  to  Morton,  differs  from  the 
Teutonic  in  having  a  less  spheroidal  and  more  decidedly  oval  cranium. 

"I  have  not  hitherto  exerted  myself  to  obtain  crania  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  except  in 
the  instance  of  individuals  who  have  been  signalized  by  their  crimes ;  and  this  number  is 
too  small  to  be  of  much  importance  in  a  generalization  like  the  present.  Yet,  since  these 
skulls  have  been  procured  without  any  reference  to  their  size,  it  is  remarkable  that  five  give 
an  average  of  96  cubic  inches  for  the  bulk  of  the  brain;  the  smallest  head  measuring  91, 
and  the  largest  105  cubic  inches.  It  is  necessary,  however,  to  observe,  that  these  are  all 
male  crania;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  they  pertained  to  the  lowest  class  of  society;  and 
three  of  them  died  on  the  gallows  for  the  crime  of  murder." 

191  In  arranging  the  Mortonian  collection,  I  have  excluded  from  the  Anglo-Saxons  the 
skull  of  a  lunatic  Englishman  (No.  62) ;  and  from  the  Anglo-Americans,  several  skulls  of 
lunatics,  idiots,  children,  hydrocephalic  cases,  &c.  This  rule  has  been  adopted  throughout 
the  whole  collection. 


300 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


"  The  Anglo-Americans — the  lineal  descendants  of  the  Anglo-Saxons — conform  in  all  their 
characteristics  to  the  parent  stock.  They  possess,  in  common  with  their  English  ancestors, 
and  in  consequence  of  their  amalgamation,  a  more  elongated  head192  than  the  unmixed 
Germans.  The  few  crania  in  my  possession  have,  without  exception,  been  derived  from  the 
lowest  and  least  cultivated  portion  of  the  community  —  malefactors,  paupers,  and  lunatics. 
The  largest  brain  has  been  97  cubic  inches ;  the  smallest  82 ;  and  the  mean  of  90  (nearly) 
accords  with  that  of  the  collective  Teutonic  race.  The  sexes  of  these  seven  skulls  are  four 
male  and  three  female." — (Morton). 


Fig.  28. 


Craniographers  have  not  yet  agreed  upon  the  essential  characters 
of  the  typical  Keltic  skull.  According  to  Prichard,  "  Some  remains 
found  in  Britain  give  reason  to  suspect  that  the  Celtic  inhabitants 
of  this  county  (Britain)  had  in  early  times  something  of  the  Mongo- 
lian or  Turanian  form  of  the  head."193  Dr.  Morton  informs  us  that 
the  Kelts  of  Brittany,  Scotland,  and  Ireland — the  descendants  of  the 
primitive  Gael — "have  the  head  rather  elongated,  and  the  forehead 
narrow  and  but  slightly  arched :  the  brow  is  low,  straight,  and  bushy; 
the  eyes  and  hair  are  light,  the  nose  and  mouth  large,  and  the  cheek- 
bones high.  The  general  contour  of  the  face 
is  angular,  and  the  expression  harsh." 194  In 
a  letter  to  Mr.  Gliddon,  he  alludes  to  the 
Tokkari,  a  people  frequently  represented  on 
the  Egyptian  monuments  (Fig.  28),  in  the 
following  terms:  They  "have  strong  Celtic 
features;  as  seen  in  the  sharp  face,  the  large 
and  irregularly-formed  nose,  wide  mouth, 
and  a  certain  harshness  of  expression,  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  same  people  in  all 
their  varied  localities.  Those  who  are  fami- 
liar with  the  southern  Highlanders  (of  Scot- 
land), may  recognise  a  speaking  resem- 
blance."195 Prof.  Ketzitjs  places  the  Keltic  cranium  in  his  dolicho- 
cephalic class,  and  describes  it  as  long,  narrow,  laterally  compressed, 
and  low  in  the  forehead.  Dr.  Gustaf  Kombst  speaks  of  the  Keltic 
skull  as  "  elongated  from  front  to  back,  moderate  in  breadth  and 
length." 1%  In  a  letter-to.  Dr.  Thurnam,  one  of  the  authors  of  Crania 
Britanniea,  Prof.  ISTilsson  declares  that  nothing  is  more  uncertain  and 
vague  than  the  so-called  form  of  the  Keltic  cranium,  for  hardly  two 
authors  have  the  same  opinion  of  it.197 

i92  <i  This  peculiarity  must  continue  to  develop  itself  still  more  obviously  in  the  United  States, 
in  consequence  of  the  immense  influx  of  a  pure  Celtic  population  from  the  south  and  west 
of  Ireland ;  for  this  population,  by  intermarriage  with  families  of  English  and  German 
descent,  while  it  rapidly  loses  its  own  national  physiognomy,  will  leave  its  traces  in  a  part, 
at  least,  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  by  whom  it  is  everywhere  surrounded." 

193  Researches,  &c,  vol.  III.,  p.  XX.  194  Crania  Americana,  p.  16. 

IK  Letter  dated  Philada.,  Nov.  23,  1842.  ™  Keith  Johnston's  Physical  Atlas. 

191  Crania  Britanniea,  p.  1 7. 


Tokkari. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF     MEN.  301 

Serres'   G-alerie  Anthropohgique,  Fig-  29- 

at  Paris,  contains  a  skull  (Fig.  29) 
marked  "  Type  Celte,  —  decouvert 
dans  l'aneien  pare  de  Madame  de 
Pompadour  a  Bellevue,  pres  Paris." 

The  discrepancy  of  opinion  indi- 
cated in  the  preceding  paragraph, 
results  from  the  fact  already  stated, 
that  Ireland  has  at  different  periods 
been  the  home  of  different  and  dis- 
tinct races  of  men,  whose  history  is 

recorded  only  on  their  moulderinsr 

Type  Celte. 
osseous  remains,  and  the  rude  im- 
plements with  which  these  remains  are  generally  found  associated. 
These  different  races  have  transmitted,  in  varying  degrees  of  purity, 
their  respective  and  peculiar  types  of  skull  to  the  Irish  population 
of  the  present  day.  To  each  and  all  of  these  types,  the  term  "  Keltic" 
has  been  applied ;  hence,  the  term  has  at  length  become  synonymous 
with  "Irish,"  and,  therefore,  lost  all  definite  and  certain  meaning, 
just  as  the  very  comprehensive  word  "American,"  as  applied  to 
the  heterogeneous  population  of  the  United  States,  means  Dutch, 
English,  Irish,  French,  Red  Indians,  &c,  &c. 

The  Keltic  race  is  represented  in  the  Mortonian  Collection  by 
eight  Irish  heads,  four  skulls  from  the  Parisian  catacombs,  and  one 
from  the  field  of  Waterloo.  No.  18  —  a  female  Irish  skull  from  the 
Abbey  of  Buttevant,  County  of  Cork  —  has  a  form  intermediate 
between  the  Cimbric  and  Swedish  types,  already  described  on  page 
291.  In  No.  21  — a  soldier  killed  at  the  battle  of  Chippeway  —  the 
Gothic  or  Teutonic  calvarial  form  is  associated  with  a  heavy,  massive . 
face.  No.  42 — the  skull  of  an  Irishman,  setat.  21,  imprisoned  for  lar- 
ceny, and  in  all  respects  a  vicious  and  refractory  character — approaches 
the  square  Germanic  form.  No.  52 — from  the  Abbey  of  Buttevant — 
has  the  same  form.  No.  985 — skull  of  an  Irishman,  setat.  60  years — 
being  rather  broad  between  the  parietal  tubers,  also  approximates 
the  Gothic  type.  The  face  resembles  that  of  some  of  the  Finns,  but 
is  smaller  and  less  massive.  No.  1186 — an  Irish  cranium  from  Mayo 
County  —  belongs  to  the  peculiar  boat-shaped  Cimbric  type.  No. 
1356  —  a  cast  of  the  skull  of  one  of  the  ancient  Celtic  race  of  Ire- 
land198—  appears  to  me  to  be  the  most  typical  in  the  Irish  group 
thus  briefly  enumerated.     This  head,  the  largest  in  the  group,  is 

198  This  cast  tears  the  following  memorandum:  "Descendant  of  an  ancient  Irish  King, 
Alexander  O'Connor.  —  Original  in  Dublin." 


302  THE     CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

very  long,  clumsy  and  massive  in  its  general  appearance.  The  fore- 
head is  low,  broad,  and  ponderous;  the  occiput  heavy  and  very 
protuberant ;  the  basis  cranii  long,  broad,  and  flat ;  the  orbits 
capacious ;  and  the  distance  from  the  root  of  the  nose  to  the 
Upper  alveolus  quite  short.  In  its  general  form,  it  very  much 
resembles  the  Cimbric  skull,  Kb.  1362.  The  Cimbric  type,  how- 
ever, is  somewhat  narrower  in  the  frontal  region,  and  widens 
more  posteriorly  towards  the  parietal  protuberances.  In  his 
work,  cited  above,  Prof.  Nilsson  figures  a  massive,  oblong  head 
to  which  the  Irish  skull  under  consideration  bears  a  considerable 
resemblance.  A  very  heavy  skull  from  the  field  of  Waterloo  (So. 
1564)  is  strictly  and  beautifully  oval.  Of  the  four  heads  from  the 
catacombs  at  Paris,  three  are  decidedly  brachy-cephalic,  and  one 
of  the  Germanic  form. 

Leaving  "Western  Europe — the  home  of  the  Celtee —  and  turning 
our  steps  towards  the  region  of  the  old  Plercynian  Forest,  and  the 
sources  of  the  Saale  River,  we  meet  with  a  type  of  skull  which  has 
figured  pre-eminently  in  the  momentous  and  stirring  historical  events 
of  which  Europe  has  been  the  arena.  The  Germanic,  Gothic,  or 
Teutonic  skull  which  Tacitus  regarded  as  indigenous  to  the  heart 
of  Europe,  is  briefly  described  by  Morton,  as  "  large  and  spheroidal, 
the  forehead  broad  and  arched,  the  face  round.  .  .  ."199  Prichard, 
after  stating  that  we  derive  no  information  from  the  classical  writers 
concerning  the  form  of  the  head  in  the  ancient  Germans,  says:  "The 
modern  Germans  are  well  known  to  have  large  heads,  with  the  ante- 
rior part  of  the  cranium  elevated  and  fully  developed.  They  have 
this  peculiarity  of  form  in  a  greater  degree  than  either  the  French 
or  English."200  Vesalius  observes,  "that  the  Germans  had  gene- 
.  rally  a  flattened  occiput  and  broad  head."201  According  to  Kombst, 
the  Teutonic  skull  is  larger  and  rounder  than  the  Keltic.  The  head 
and  face  form  a  semi-circle,  to  which  the  small  end  of  the  oval  is 
added,  formed  by  the  inter-maxillary  region.  The  brow  is  broad, 
high,  and  massive.202  Wear  the  close  of  the  Decades,  Bltjmenbach 
figures  a  cranium  found  in  an  ancient  tumulus  near  Romsted,  in 
the  district  of  Weimar,  and  which  the  poet-philosopher  Goethe  sup- 
posed to  be  that  of  an  ancient  German.  He  unfortunately  gives 
no  description  of  it,  but  merely  alludes  to  its  symmetry  and  "fron- 
tem  globosam  et  limbi  alveolaris  angustiorem  arcum."  Vimont,  in 
his  chapter  on  Tetes  nationales,  speaks  of  the  "  capacite  considerable," 

199  Crania  Americana,  p.  13. 

200  Researches  into  the  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  iii.  393.  *>i  De  Corp.  Fab.  Human. 
202  A.  Keith  Johnston's  Physical  Atlas  of  Natural  Phenomena,  2d  edit.,  p.  106. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  303 

the  thickness  of  the  bones,  and  the  great  development  of  the  upper 

and  anterior  parts  of  the  German  skull.203     The  reader  will  obtain  a 

general  idea  of  the  Germanic  cal- 

&  .  Fig.  30. 

varial  type  from  the  accompanying 

engraving  (Fig.  30),  representing 
the  skull  of  the  illustrious  German 
poet,  Frederick  Schiller.  It  is 
reduced  from  Plate  I.  of  Dr.  Carus' 
"Atlas  der  Cranioscopie."201  The 
authenticity  of  the  drawing,  the 
evident  beauty  of  form  and  har- 
mony of  proportion,  the  brilliant 
literary  souvenirs  inseparably  at- 
tached to  the  memory  of  the  au- 

SCHILLER. 

thor  of  the  Robbers,  and  mend  of 

Goethe,  and  especially  the  somewhat  Sclavonic  cast  of  the  facial 
region,  have  induced  me  to  adopt  this  skull,  in  preference  to  any 
of  the  heads  contained  in  Morton's  Collection,  as  the  standard  or 
typical  representative,  not  so  much  of  Teutonic  as  of  Central  and 
Eastern  Europe,  in  general.  Dr.  Carus  thus  comments  upon  this 
Profit  du  Crane  de  Frederic  de  Schiller  d'apres  un  pldtre  rnoule : 

"  Dans  V  ensemble,  la  proportionnalitS  est,  on  ne  peut  plus  heureuse  et  en  parfaite  har- 
monie  avec  les  qualitfa  d'un  esprit  Eminent,  lesquelles  durent  sous  tous  les  rapports,  placer 
Schiller  a,  cote  de  Goethe.  Chacune  de  trois  vertebres  du  crane  se  trouve  dans  l'6tat  du 
developpenient  le  plus  beau  et  !e  plus  complet ;  la  vertfebrc  m^diane  est  particuliferement 
grande,  gracieusemente  vout^e,  finement  modeled.  Le  front  est  essentiellement  plus  d&- 
veloppe'  enlargeurque  celui  de  Goethe,chez  qui  cependantil  6tait  plus  saillantau  milieu.  .  .  . 
L' occiput  est  egalement  expressif,  sans  bosse  ni  protuberance;  c'est  surtout  par  une  cer- 
taine  formation  i51e"gamment  arrondie  de  toute  la  tete  que  l'ceil  de  l'observateur  se  sent 
agr^ablement  captiveV' 

Of  all  the  European  crania  in  Morton's  Collection,  that  of  a  Dutch- 
man approximates  most  closely  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  true  Ger- 
manic or  Teutonic  form.  This  skull  is  remarkable  for  possessing 
the  large  internal  capacity  of  114  cubic  inches  —  the  largest  in  the 
entire  collection.  The  calvaria  is  very  large ;  the  face  rather  small, 
delicate,  well-formed,  and  tapering  towards  the  chin.  The  frontal 
diameter  or  breadth  between  the  temples,  is  4J  inches ;  the  greatest 
breadth  between  the  parietal  protuberances  is  6-|  inches ;  the  antero- 
posterior or  longitudinal  diameter  is  7f  inches ;  the  height,  mea- 

203  Traits  de  Phrenologie,  Humaine  et  Compared.     Par  J.  "Vimont.     Paris,  1835,  ii.  478. 

204  Atlas  der  Cranioscopie,  oder  Abbildungen  der  Schajdel-  und  Antlitzformen  Beruehmter 
oder  sonst  merkwuerdiger  Personen,  von  Dr.  C.  G.  Carus.  Heft.  I.  Leipzig,  1843.  The 
plates  are  accompanied  with  German  and  French  text. 


304  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

sured  from  the  anterior  edge  of  the  foramen  magnum,  in  a  direct 
line  to  the  sagittal  suture,  is  5jg  inches.  A  certain  angularity  or 
squareness  of  the  frontal  and  posterior  bi-parietal  regions,  gives  to 
this  head  the  Teutonic  form.  The  posterior  or  occipital  region  is 
flat  and  broad,  and  presents  to  the  eye  a  somewhat  pentagonal  out- 
line. The  temporal  regions  are  full,  the  mastoid  processes  large, 
and  the  basis  cranii  nearly  round.  The  outline  of  the  coronal 
region  resembles  a  triangle,  truncated  at  the  apex.  This  latter 
feature  is  also  seen  in  one  of  the  Finnic  skulls  (No.  1538). 

Sixteen  skulls  represent  the  Suevic  or  Germanic  race  in  Morton's 
Collection.  The  form  of  No.  37  —  the  skull  of  a  German  woman  — 
is  round.  No.  1063  —  a  German  of  Tubingen  —  exhibits  the  square 
form  very  decidedly.  The  occiput  is  flattened ;  the  face  large  and 
long.  No.  1064  —  also  of  Tubingen — has  the  Swedish  or  Northern, 
angular  oval,  a  type  distinct  from  the  oval  of  Southern  Europe,  with 
which  hasty  observers  are  apt  to  confound  it.  It  is  a  well-formed 
head,  and  in  some  respects  resembles  the  Anglo-Saxon  skull  figured 
in  Crania  Britanniea.  No.  1188  —  also  of  Tubingen — resembles  the 
preceding  skull.  No.  1189  (Tubingen)  bears  the  Swedo-Finnic  type. 
Nos.  1191— German  of  Frankfort  — 1192  and  1193  — Prussians  of 
Berlin  —  approximate  the  square  form.  Nos.  1187  (Frankfort),  and 
1065  (Prussian),  present  the  Swedish  type.  No.  1066  (Prussian),  is 
square,  or  angularly  round. 

It  will  thus  be  seen,  from  the  foregoing  observations  on  the  crania 
of  the  races  of  Northern,  Central,  and  Western  Europe,  that  we  must 
distinguish  for  these  regions  several  distinct  cranial  types  —  a  Lap- 
ponic,  a  Finnic,  a  Norwegian,  a  Swedish,  a  Cimbric,  a  Germanic, 
an  Anglo-Saxon,  a  Keltic,  &c. ;  that  the  modern  Finn  represents,  in 
all  probability,  the  ancient  Tchudic  or  Scythic  tribes ;  that  the  Nor- 
wegian and  Swedish  are  varieties  of  the  same  type ;  that  the  Ger- 
manic form  is  intermediate  between  the  Finn  and  Swede ;  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  skull  is  allied  to  the  Swedish,  its  facial  portion  bearing, 
to  some  extent,  the  Finnic  stamp ;  that  the  Cimbric  type  is  very 
ancient  (more  ancient,  perhaps,  than  any  of  the  forms  just  enume- 
rated, except  the  Lapponic),  resembles  the  kumbe-kephalic,  and 
represents  a  primitive  humanitarian  epoch ;  that  the  Keltic  type, 
if  indeed  any  such  exists,  should  be  regarded  as  a  variety  of  the 
Cimbric  — ■  a  low  and  early  form ;  and  lastly,  that  the  various  types 
of  skull  to  a  certain  extent  approach,  represent,  and  blend  with  each 
other  in  obedience  to  the  great  and,  as  yet,  not  properly  understood 
law  of  gradation  which  seems  to  pervade  and  harmonize  all  natural 
forms,  and  in  consequence,  also,  of  the  amalgamations  which,  within 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


305 


certain  limits,  must  have  accompanied  the  successive  occupancy  of 
this  region  by  the  races  of  men  under  consideration. 

In  the  following  Table,  the  reader  will  find  these  races  compared 
together  in  relation  to  their  cranial  capacities. 


TABLE  III. 
European  Crania. 


Finns. 

Swedes. 

Germans. 

Anglo- 
Saxons. 

Anglo-Ameri- 
cans. 

Kelts. 

ClMDRI. 

No.  in 

No.  in 

No.  in 

No.  in 

No.  in 

No.  in 

No.  in 

Cata- 

i.e. 

Cata- 

I. a 

Cata- 

i.e. 

Cata- 

i.e. 

Cata- 

i.e. 

Cata- 

i.e. 

Cata- 

I. C. 

1 

logue. 

logue. 

logue. 

logue. 

logue. 

logue. 

logue. 

1534 

04.5 

1486 

00 

706 

94. 

80 

91 

552 

97 

21 

93 

1255 

80 

1535 

07.5 

1545 

107.5 

1063 

86. 

539 

92 

890 

01 

42 

97 

1532 

SO 

a 

1536 

112.5 

1546 

03.75 

1188 

85. 

991 

105 

1108 

05 

52 

82 

1550 

94 

< 

1537 

84.25 

1547 

102. 

11S0 

78. 

59 

99 

985 

93 

1538 

105. 

1548 

94. 

1191 

95. 

1186 

77 

1530 

81.5 

1540 

108.25 

1187 

104. 

1664 

87.5 

1540 

88.5 

434 

114. 

1541 

00. 

1065 

92. 



1066 

80. 

Mean.. 

05.34 

100.75 

92. 

96.75 

94.33 

8S..25 

84.66 

1247 

85. 

1064 

91. 

7 

83. 

IS 

78. 

1249 

S3 

3 

1487 

65. 

1062 

93. 

24 

82. 

M 

1192 

S2. 

3 

a 
1  s» 
1 

1193 

so. 

04.31 

00.3 

89.6 

86.78 

84.25 

In  the  above  Table,  the  reader  will  observe  the  high  cranial 
capacities  of  the  Swedes,  Finns,  and  Germans ;  he  will  also  per- 
ceive that  the  Anglo-Saxons. and  Anglo-Americans  possess  the  same 
large  average ;  while  the  mean  for  the  Kelts  and  Cimbri  is  several 
inches  less.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  that  in  the  column  marked  "Kelts," 
J*Tos.  21,  42,  52,  and  985  exhibit  the  Gothic  type,  as  before  men- 
tioned (page  301),  and  have  in  general  the  high  internal  capacity 
of  the  Northern  races ;  while  Nbs.  18,  1186,  and  1564,  which  are 
of  the  Cimbric  type,  possess  a  lower  internal  capacity.  The  Table 
is  not  extensive  enough  to  base  upon  this  interesting  fact  any  posi- 
tive conclusion ;  but  as  far  as  this  fact  goes,  it  appears  to  me  to 
confirm  the  suggestion  already  advanced,  that  the  Cimbric  and 
Keltic  types  of  skull  are  closely  allied,  if  not,  indeed,  identical. 

As  the  observant  traveller,  coming  from  the  west,  approaches  the 
banks  of  the  Vistula,  he  becomes  aware  of  some  modifications  of  the 
cranial  type  just  described,  —  modifications  which  call  to  his  mind 
20 


306  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

dim  recollections  of  the  Turk,  the  Tartar,  and  the  Finn.  In  this 
region — the  debatable  ground  upon  which,  from  very  remote  periods, 
the  Sclavonian  and  the  German  have  overlapped  and  blended,  —  he 
encounters  here  and  there  certain  transitionary  forms,  which  prepare 
him  for  a  change  of  type.  Once  beyond  the  Vistula  and  the  Carpa- 
thians, in  the  country  of  the  "Wend,  the  Slovaek,  and  the  Magyar,  he 
is  called  upon  to  study  a  form  of  head,  whose  geographical  area  — 
Sarmatia  of  the  classical  writers — extends  from  the  region  just  indi- 
cated into  central  Asia,  having  the  Great  TJwalli  for  its  northern,  and 
the  Euxine  Sea  and  tribes  of  the  Caucasus  for  its  southern  boundary. 
The  dawn  of  history  reveals  this  extensive  tract  occupied,  as  at  the 
present  day,  by  the  Sclavonians,  a  great  family,  whom  an  able  writer 
in  the  North  British  Review,  for  August,  1849,  considers  to  be  as 
much  an  aboriginal  race  of  Eastern,  as  the  Germans  are  of  Central 
Europe. 

According  to  Prichard,  this  great  people,  who  appear  to  be  an 
aboriginal  European  branch  of  the  ancient  Scythse,  "  have  the  com- 
mon type  of  the  Indo-Atlantic  nations  in  general,  and  of  the  Indo- 
European  family  to  which  it  belongs."  m  M.  Edwards  thus  minutely 
describes  the  Sclavonic  type : 

"The  oontour  of  the  head,  viewed  in  front,  approaches  nearly  to  a  square;  the  height 
surpasses  a  little  the  breadth ;  the  summit  is  sensibly  flattened ;  and  the  direction  of  the 
jaw  is  horizontal.  The  length  of  the  nose  is  less  than  the  distance  from  its  base  to  the 
chin ;  it  is  almost  straight  from  the  depression  at  its  root,  that  is  to  say,  without  decided 
curvation ;  but,  if  appreciable,  it  is  slightly  concave,  so  that  the  end  has  a  tendency  to  turn 
up ;  the  inferior  part  is  rather  large,  and  the  extremity  rounded.  The  eyes,  rather  deep 
set,  are  perfectly  on  the  same  line ;  and  when  they  have  any  particular  character,  they  are 
smaller  than  the  proportion  of  the  head  would  seem  to  indicate.  The  eyebrows  are  thin, 
and  very  near  the  eyes,  particularly  at  the  internal  angle ;  and  from  this  point  are  often 
directed  obliquely  outwards.  The  mouth,  which  is  not  salient,  has  thin  lips,  and  is  much 
nearer  to  the  nose  than  to  the  top  of  the  chin.  Another  singular  characteristic  may  be 
added,  and  which  is  very  general;  viz.,  their  small  beard,  except  on  the  upper  lip.  Such 
is  the  common  type  among  the  Poles,  Silesians,  Moravians,  Bohemians,  Sclavonic  Hunga- 
rians, and  it  is  very  common  among  the  Russians."206 

According  to  Prof.  Retzius,  the  Sclavonic  cranium  is  of  an  oval 
form,  truncated  posteriorly.  Its  greatest  length  is  to  its  greatest 
breadth  as  1000  :  888.  The  external  auditory  meati  are  posterior  to 
the  plane  passing  through  the  middle  of  the  longitudinal  diameter. 
The  face  is  exactly  like  that  of  the  Swedes. 

The  Sclavonic  Race  is  but  poorly  represented  in  the  cranial  collec- 
tion of  the  Academy.  Besides  the  cast  of  a  Sclavonian  head  from 
Morlack,  in  Dalmatia,  it  contains  only  the  head  of  a  woman  from 
Olmutz  in  Moravia.  "I  record  this  deficiency  in  my  collection," 
wrote  Dr.  Morton,  a  short  time  before  his  death,  "  in  the  hope  that 

205  Researches  into  the  Physical  History  of  Mankind,  iii.,  442. 

206  Des  Caracteres  Physiologiques  des  Races  Humaines.     Par  W.  F.  Edwards,  1829. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF     MEN. 


507 


SCLAVONIAN  (1251). 


some  person,  interested  in  pursuits  of  this  nature,  may  be  induced  to 
provide  me  with  materials  for  making  the  requisite  comparisons. 
My  impression  is,  that  the  Sclavonian  brain  will  prove  much  less 
voluminous  than  that  of  the  Teutonic  race." 

The  Olmutzian  head  above  alluded  to  (Fig.  31)  very  well  repre- 
sents the  skull-type  of  Eastern 
Europe.  It  presents  the  fol- 
lowing characters :  —  General 
form  of  the  head  globular, 
though  wanting  in  symmetry, 
in  consequence  of  the  posterior 
portion  of  the  right  parietal 
bone  being  more  fully  devel- 
oped than  the  corresponding 
portion  of  the  left;  the  calva- 
ria  quite  large  in  proportion  to 
the  face,  and  broadest  poste- 
riorly between  the  parietal  pro- 
tuberances; the  forehead  is 
high,  and  moderately  broad ;  the  vertex  presents  a  somewhat  flat- 
tened appearance,  in  consequence  of  sloping  downwards  and  back- 
wards towards  the  occiput ;  the  occipital  region  is  also  flat,  and  the 
breadth  between  the  mastoid  processes  very  great.  The  face  is  small 
and  delicate,  the  nasal  bones  prominent,  the  orbits  of  moderate  size, 
the  malar  bones  flat  and  delicately  rounded,  and  the  zygomatic  pro- 
cesses small  and  slender.  The  lower  jaw  is  rather  small,  rounded  at 
the  angles,  and  quite  acuminated  at  the  symphysis.  If  classified 
according  to  its  form,  this  head  would  find  its  place  near  to,  if  not 
between,  the  Kalmuck  and  Turkish  types. 

Interlopers  in  the  lands  of  the  Slovack  for  1000  years,  and  speaking 
a  dialect  of  the  Finnish  language,  the  Magyars,  or  Hungarians,  pre- 
sent us  with  ethnic  peculiarities  which,  for  several  reasons,  are  worthy 
our  close  attention.  Like  the  Yakuts  of  the  Lena,  they  are  a  dislo- 
cated people.  The  displacements  of  the  two  races,  however,  have 
been  in  opposite  directions.  The  physical  characters,  language,  and 
traditions  of  the  Yakuts  indicate  a  more  southern  origin ;  the  cranial 
type  and  language  of  the  Magyar  point  to  the  North.  Edwards  thus 
briefly  describes  what  may  be  called  the  Hungarian  type,  in  contra- 
distinction to  the  Slovack : 

"  Head  nearly  round,  forehead  little  developed,  low,  and  bending ;  the  eyes  placed  obliquely, 
so  that  the  external  angle  is  elevated ;  the  nose  short  and  flat ;  mouth  prominent  and  lips 
thick :  neck  very  strong ;  so  that  the  back  of  the  head  appears  flat,  forming  almost  a  straight, 
line  with  the  nape ;  beard  weak  and  scattering ;   stature  small."20' 

*>'  Op.  cit. 


308  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  Mortonian  Collection  contains  not  a 
single  Hungarian  skull.  "Well-drawn  descriptions  of  the  crania  of 
this  nation  would,  in  all  probability,  settle  at  once  and  forever  the 
long-disputed  question  of  their  origin.  I  may  say,  in  passing,  how- 
ever, that  the  above  description  of  Edwards  rather  tends  to  the  sup- 
position that  the  Hungarians  are  cognate  with  the  Finns. 

Upon  the  southern  border  of  the  lands  of  the  Magyar  we  encounter 
the  Wallachs,  the  probable  descendants  of  the  ancient  Getre  or  Da- 
cians,  and  the  only  living  representatives  of  the  ancient  Thracian 
race,  whose  area  extended  from  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean, 
northward  beyond  the  Danube,  and  eastward  into  Asia  Minor. 
Here  the  human  type  again  varies,  to  such  an  extent,  indeed,  that 
Prichaed  speaks  of  the  "Wallachs  as  a  people  peculiar  and  distinct 
from  all  the  other  inhabitants  of  the  countries  on  the  Lower  Danube. 

"The  common  Wallach,"  he  continues,  "as  we  are  informed  by  a  late  traveller,  differs 
in  a  decided  manner  from  the  Magyar  or  Hungarian,  as  well  as  from  the  Slaves  and 
Germans  who  inhabit  the  borders  of  Hungary.  They  are  generally  below  the  middle 
height,  thin,  and  slightly  built.  Their  features  are  often  finely  shaped,  their  noses 
arched,  their  eyes  dark,  their  hair  long,  black,  and  wavy;  their  countenances  are  often 
expressive  of  cunning  and  timidity.  They  seldom  display  the  dull  heavy  look  of  the 
Slovak,  and  still  more  rarely  the  proud  carriage  of  the  Magyar. 

"  Mr.  Paget  was  struck  by  the  resemblance  which  the  present  Wallachs  bear  to  the 
sculptured  figures  of  ancient  Dacians  to  be  seen  on  Trajan's  Pillar,  which  are  remarkable 
for  long  and  flowing  beards."208 

In  the  Bulgarians  of  the  southern  banks  of  the  Danube,  and  the 
Albanians  of  the  Venetian  Gulf,  we  discover  still  other  types,  differ- 
ing alike  from  each  other,  and  from  the  "Wallachian.  Like  the 
Basques  of  the  Pyrenees,  the  Bretons  of  France,  and  the  Gaels  of 
Britain,  the  Albanians  or  Skippetars  differ  in  language  and  physical 
characters  from  the  races  by  which  they  are  surrounded,  and  appear 
to  be  the  remnant  of  a  people  who,  if  not  identical  with  the  myste- 
rious and  much-debated  Pelasgi,  were,  in  all  probability,  their  eotem- 
poraries.  They  differ  decidedly  from  their  Greek  neighbors,  being 
generally  nearly  six  feet  high,  and  strong  and  muscular  in  propor- 
tion. "  They  have  oval  faces,  large  mustachios,  a  ruddy  color  in 
their  cheeks,  a  brisk,  animated  eye,  a  well-proportioned  mouth,  and 
line  teeth.  Their  neck  is  long  and  thin,  their  chest  broad;  their 
legs  are  slender,  with  very  little  calf."209 

Neither  time  nor  space  permits  me,  nor  does  the  Mortonian  Col- 
lection  contain   the   cranial    material    necessary,   to    illustrate   the 


208  Researches,  &c,  iii.  p.  504.     See,  also,  Paget's  Travels  in  Hungary  and  Transylvania, 
vol.  ii.  p.  189,  et  seq.     London,  1839.     See  ante,  Pulszky's  Chap.,  fig.  70,  "Daoian." 

209  Poqueville  cited  by  Prichard. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  309 

numerous  and  diversified  types  of  skull  which  are  now,  as  in  the 
most  ancient  times,  found  scattered  through  the  Grecian,  Italian, 
and  Iberian  peninsulas  of  Europe  —  in  fact,  all  along  the  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean.     Tribe  after  tribe,  race  after  race,  nation  after 
nation,  appear  successively  to  have  occupied  the  soil  of  Europe, 
playing  out  their  allotted  part  in  the  great  Life-drama,  and  then 
sinking  quietly  into  the  oblivion  of  the  dim,  mysterious,  and  eternal 
Past,  whose  only  records  are  vague  traditions,  and  strange  linguistic 
forms  —  whose  sole  monuments  are  rude  mounds,  and  mouldering 
humatile  bones.      Here  and  there,  we  are  called  upon  to  contem- 
plate fragmentary  and  isolated  communities,  whose  origin  is  lost 
in  the  night  of  time,  and  who  for  long  ages  have  clung  to  a  moun- 
tain range,  to  a  valley,  or  a  water-course,  differing  from  the  more 
modern  but  still  ancient  people  about  them,  and  slowly  awaiting 
that  annihilation  which  they  instinctively  feel  is  sure  to  come  at  last. 
As  the  Universe  maintains  its  life  and  pristine  vigor  by  an  unending 
destruction,  which  is  simply  an  incessant  transmutation  of  its  parts ; 
and  as  the  health  of  individual  man  is  preserved  by  the  ceaseless 
molecular  death  and  metamoi'phosis  of  the  tissues,  so  the  Human 
Family  —  the  huge  body  humanitarian  —  is  kept  alive  and  strong 
upon  the  globe  by  the  decay  and  death,  from  time  to  time,  of  its 
ethnic  members.     If  these  passive,  stagnating  parts  were  allowed  to 
accumulate,  the  death  of  the  whole  would  be  inevitable.      Thus 
hoary  Nature,   establishing  in  death  the  hidden  springs  of  other 
forms  and  modes  of  life,  maintains  herself  ever  young  and  vigorous, 
and  through  apparent  evil  incessantly  engenders  good. 

It  would  be  unpardonable,  in  this  attempted  survey  of  the  cranial 
characteristics  of  the  races  of  men,  though  ever  so  hurriedly  made, 
if  we  omitted  to  notice  the  Greeks  and  Romans —  respectively,  the 
intellectual  and  physical  masters  of  the  world.  In  the  Greek  skull, 
we  behold  the  emblem  of  exalted  reason ;  in  the  Roman,  that  of 
unparalleled  military  prowess.  Not  alone  in  the  matchless  forms 
which  the  inspired  chisel  of  a  Phidias  and  a  Praxiteles  has  left  us, 
may  we  study  the  Grecian  type.  Among  the  Speziotes  of  the  Archi- 
pelago, and  in  various  localities  through  the  Morea  —  the  area  of  the 
ancient  Hellenes  —  these  marble  figures  still  find  their  living  repre- 
sentatives ;  thus  attesting,  at  once  the  truthfulness  of  the  artist,  and 
the  pertinacity  with  which  nature  ever  clings  to  her  typical  forms. 
Nor  need  we  resort  to  the  Ducal  Gallery  at  Florence,  to  obtain  a 
correct  idea  of  the  Roman  type,  as  embodied  in  the  busts  of  the 
early  Emperors  of  the  Seven-hilled  City.  Travellers  inform  us,  that 
this  type,  unchanged  by  the  vicissitudes  of  time  and  circumstance, 


310 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


still  lives  and  moves  in  the  "Trasteverini,"  or  mob  population  of  the 
Tiber. 

Dr.  Morton  thus  describes  the  Greek  physiognomy: 

"  The  forehead  is  high,   expanded,  and  but  little   arched,  so  that  it  forms,  with  the 
straight  and  pointed  nose,   a  nearly  rectilinear  outline.      This  conformation  sometimes 
_,  imparts   an   appearance   of    disproportion    to   the 

upper  part  of  the  face,  which,  however,  is  in  a 
great  measure  counteracted  by  the  largeness  of  the 
eye.  The  Greek  face  is  a  fine  oval,  and  small  in 
comparison  to  the  voluminous  head.  The  statues 
of  the  Olympian  Jupiter,  and  the  Apollo  Belvidere 
(Fig.  32),  convey  an  exact  idea  of  the  perfect 
Grecian  countenance."210 

"In  the  Greek,"  says  Martin,  "the  counte- 
nance has  a  more  animated  expression ;  the  eyes 
are  large ;  and  the  forehead  advancing,  produces 
a  marked  but  elegant  super-orbital  margin,  on 
which  the  eyebrows  are  delicately  pencilled ;  the 
nose,  falling  straight  from  the  forehead,  sometimes 
inclines  to  an  aquiline  form,  and  is  often  of  rather 
more  than  moderate  length ;  the  upper  lip  is  short, 
and  the  mouth  delicately  moulded ;  the  lower  jaw 
is  not  so  large  as  to  disturb  the  oval  contour  of  the 
face,  and  the  chin  is  prominent ;  the  general  ex- 
pression, with  less  of  sternness  than  in  the  Roman, 
has  equal  daring,  and  betokens  intellectual  exalta- 
Apollo  Belvideke.  tion."211 

Blumenbach  describes  a  Greek  skull  —  with  one  exception,  the 
most  beautiful  head  in  his  collection — in  the  following  terms:  "The 
Kg.  33.  form  of  the  calvaria  sub-globular ;  the  fore- 

head most  nobly  arched ;  the  superior  max- 
illary bones,  just  beneath  the  nasal  aperture, 
joined  in  a  plane  almost  perpendicular ;  the 
malar  bones  even,  and  sloping  moderately 
downwards." 2l2  Fig.  33,  borrowed  from  the 
first  volume  of  Prichard's  Researches,  repre- 
sents the  skull  of  a  Greek,  named  Constan- 
tine  Demetriades,  a  native  of  Corfu,  and  for 
a  long  time  a  teacher  of  the  Modern  Greek 
lano-uas-e  at  Oxford.213  The  Mortonian  Col- 
lection  is  indebted  to  Prof.  Retzius  for  the  cast  of  the  skull  of  a  young 
Greek,  which  in  its  general  form  and  character  very  much  resembles 
the  above  figure  from  Prichard.  I  find  the  calvaria  well  developed ; 
the  frontal  region  expansive  and  prominent ;  the  facial  line  departs 


Gkeee 


»»  Cran.  Amer.,  p.  12. 
a2  Becas  Sexta,  p.  6. 


211  Man  and  Monkeys,  p.  223. 
213  Op.  cit.,  p.  xvii. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  311 

but  slightly  from  the  perpendicular,  and  the  facial  angle  consequently 
approaches  a  right  angle.  A  small  and  regularly-formed  face,  devoid 
of  asperities,  harmonizes  well  with  the  general  intellectual  character 
of  the  head  proper.  The  malar  bones  are  small,  flat,  and  smooth, 
with  just  enough  lateral  prominence  to  give  to  the  face  an  oval  out- 
line ;  the  alveolar  margins  of  the  maxillse  are  regularly  arched,  and 
the  teeth  perpendicular. 

Crossing  the  Gulf  of  Venice,  we  next  encounter  the  Roman  form 
of  head —  "  a  striking  type,"  to  use  the  language  of  Dr.  Wiseman, 
"  essentially  the  same,  from  the  wreathed  image  of  Seipio's  tomb, 
to  Trajan  or  Vespasian,  consisting  in  a  large  and  fiat  head;  a  low 
and  wide  forehead ;  a  face,  in  childhood,  heavy  and  round  —  later, 
broad  and  square ;  a  short  and  thick  neck,  and  a  stout  and  broad 
figure.  ISTor  need  we  go  far  to  find  their  descendants ;  they  are  to 
be  found  every  day  in  the  streets,  principally  among  the  burgesses, 
or  middle  class,  the  most  invariable  portion  of  any  population."214 
Blumenbach  presents  us  with  the  figure  of  the  skull  of  a  Roman 
praetorian  soldier,  and  accompanies  it  with  the  following  description : 

"  General  form  very  fine  and  symmetrical ;  calvaria  sub-globose,  terminating  anteriorly 
in  a  forehead  elegantly  smoothed ;  glabella  and  superciliary  arches  moderately  prominent ; 
nasal  bones  of  a  medium  form,  neither  depressed  nor  aquiline ;  cheek-bones  descending 
gently  from  the  lower  and  outer  margin  of  the  orbits,  not  protuberant  as  in  Negroes,  nor 
broadly  expanded  as  in  Mongols;  jaws  with,  the  alveolar  arches  and  rows  of  teeth  well- 
rounded  ;  external  occipital  protuberance  very  broad  and  prominent."215 

Sandifort  figures  a  Roman  skull,  and  speaks  of  the  broad,  smooth, 
and  perpendicular  foi'ehead ;  the  even  vertex,  rising  at  the  posterior 
part ;  the  lateral  globosity,  and  general  oblong  form.216  According 
to  Morton,  "  the  Roman  head  differs  from  the  Greek  in  having  the 
forehead  low  and  more  arched,  and  the  nose  strongly  aquiline, 
together  with  a  marked  depression  of  the  nasal  bones  between  the 
eyes."217  Martin  speaks  of  the  Roman  skull  as  well-formed,  "the 
forehead  remarkable  rather  for  breadth  than  elevation ;  eyes  mode- 
rately large ;  a  raised  and  usually  aquiline  nose ;  full  and  firmly 
moulded  lips;  a  large  lower  jaw,  and  a  prominent  chin,  distinguish 
the  Roman ;  and  an  expression  in  which  pride,  sternness,  and  daring 
are  blended,  complete  the  picture  of  'broad-fronted  Caesar.'  "218  Dr. 
Edwards,  after  critically  examining  the  busts  of  the  early  Emperors, 
thus  describes  the  Roman  type  of  head : 

"  The  vertical  diameter  is  short,  and  the  face,  consequently,  broad.  The  flattened  sum- 
mit of  the  cranium,  and  the  almost  horizontal  lower  margin  of  the  jaw,  cause  the  contour 

214  Lectures  on  the  Connection  between  Science  and  Revealed  Religion,  p.  152. 

215  Decades,  4to,  p.  7.  HG  Tabulse  Craniorum  diversarum  Nationum,  P.  I. 
a'  Crania  Americana,  p.  13.               218  Man  and  Monkeys,  p.  223. 


312 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


of  the  head,  as  viewed  in  front,  to  approximate  decidedly  to  a  square.  The  lateral  parts 
above  the  ears  are  protuberant;  the  forehead  low;  the  nose  truly  aquiline. —  the  curvature 
beginning  near  the  top  and  ending  before  reaching  the  point,  the  base  being  horizontal ; 
the  chin  is  round,  and  the  stature  short."  219 

Prof.  Eetzius  describes,  in  the  following  terms,  a  "  Schadel  ernes 
romischen  Kriegers,"  taken  from  an  ancient  cemetery  at  York: 

"  This  skull  is  very  large,  in  length  as  well  as  in  breadth,  though  of  the  dolicho-cephalic 
(Iranian)  form.  It  is  broader  above  towards  the  vertex,  than  below  towards  the  base. 
The  arch  of  its  upper  or  coronal  surface  and  the  vertex  are  somewhat  flat;  the  circum- 
ference, seen  from  above,  is  a  long,  wedge-like  oval,  terminating  posteriorly  in  a  short, 
obtuse  angle.  Forehead  broad,  well  arched,  but  rather  low ;  superciliary  ridges  small ; 
malar  processes  of  the  frontal  bone  small,  not  prominent ;  no  frontal  protuberances  ;  temples 
rounded  and  projecting ;  parietal  protuberances  large,  forming  lateral  angles  in  a  posterior 
view,  and  standing  far  apart;  the  semi-circular  temporal  ridge  elevated  towards  the  vertex  ; 
occiput  broad,  rounded,  the  protuberance  rather  prominent ;  the  sagittal  suture  slightly 
depressed,  especially  in  the  posterior  part;  receptaculum  cerebelli  large,  &c."220 

Dr.  Thurnam  figures  and  minutely  describes,  in  Crania  Britannica, 
the  skull  of  Theodorianus,  found  in  a  Roman  sarcophagus  at  York 

(the  ancient  Eburaeum),  erected 
probably  during  the  third  cen- 
tury of  our  sera.  He  informs 
us  that  this  skull  (Fig.  34)  is 
a  very  fine  example  of  the  an- 
cient Roman  cranium ;  that  it 
is  unusually  capacious,  its  di- 
mensions being  much  above  the 
average  in  almost  every  direc- 
tion; that  the  forehead,  though 
low,  is  remarkable  for  breadth ; 
that  the  coronal  surface  presents 
an  oval  outline,  and  is  notable 
for  its  great  transverse  diameter; 
that  the  parietal  region  is  full 
and  rounded ;  the  temporal  fossse  large ;  the  mastoid  processes 
unusually  large,  broad,  and  prominent ;  the  occipital  bone  full  and 
prominent,  especially  in  its  upper  half;  the  frontal  sinuses  and  the 
glabella  full  and  large ;  the  nasal  bones  very  large  and  broad,  with 
a  finely  aquiline  profile;  the  lachrymal  bones  and  canals  large;  the 
face  square  and  broad ;  the  superior  maxillae  somewhat  unduly  promi- 
nent along  the  alveolar  margin,  and  thus  giving  a  slightly  prognathic 
character  to  the  face ;  the  bony  palate  wide  and  deep,  &c.22! 

219  Op.  cit. 

220  Kraniologisches  von  A.   Retzius,  in  Mailer's  Archiv  fur  Anat.,   Phys.,   &c.     Jahr., 
1849.  p.  576. 

221  Op.  cit.,  p.  (3).  See,  also,  a  paper  "On  the  Crania  of  the  Ancient  Romans,"  read  by 
Mr.  J.  B.  Davis,  before  the  British  Association.     Sept.,  1855. 


Ancient  Roman. 


OF     THE     RAGES     OF     MEN. 


313 


One  of  the  long-vexed,  but  still  unsolved  problems  of  the  histo- 
rian and  the  ethnologist,  is  the  origin  and  affiliations  of  the  ancient 
Etruscans.  Whether  they  were  emigrants  from  a  foreigu  land,  as, 
with  very  few  exceptions,  the  traditions  of  the  ancients  imply,  or 
whether,  as  most  modern  writers  contend,  they  are  really  indigence, 
is  still  an  open  question.  Possessing  a  civilization  stretching  back  to, 
perhaps,  about  1000  years  b.  c,  a  cultivated  literature  and  great  phy- 
sical science,  an  elaborate  religious  system,  whose  machinery  rivalled 
in  complexity  the  colossal  Theisms  of  Hindostan  and  Egypt,  and  an 
artistic  development  of  a  high,  and  in  some  respects  peculiar  order, 
they  excelled  all  the  early  nations  of  Europe,,  except  the  Greeks,  when 
in  their  palmiest  days.  Their  language  was  cognate  with  older  forms 
of  the  Hellenic  and  Latin  tongues ;  but,  judging  from  the  figures 
represented  upon  the  coverings  of  sarcophagi,  in  painted  tombs,  and 
on  ceramic  productions,  their  physical  characters  distinguished  them 
effectually  from  the  surrounding  nations.  According  to  Prof.  K.  0. 
Miiller,  the  proportions  observed  in  these  figures  indicate  a  race  of 
small  stature,  with  great  heads  ;  short,  thick  arms,  and  a  clumsy  and 
inactive  conformation  of  body,  the  "  obesos  et  pingues  Etruseos." 
They  appear  to  have  possessed  large,  round  faces ;  a  thick  and  rather 
short  nose,  large  eyes,  a  well-marked  and  prominent  chin.232  Ed- 
wards, however,  speaks  of  observing  among, the  peasantry  of  Tus- 
cany (ancient  Etruria),  in  the  statues  and  busts  of  the  Medici  family, 
and  in  the  bas-reliefs  and  effigies  of  the  great  men  of  the  Florentine 
Republic,  a  type  of  head  characterized  by  its  length  and  narrowness, 
by  a  considerable  frontal  development,  by  a  long,  sharp-pointed,  and 
arched  nose. 

The     Galerie     Anthropolo-  FiS-  35- 

ffique,  at  Paris,  contains  a 
"  Crane  etrusque  donne  par  le 
Prince  Charles  Bonaparte," 
from  a  photograph  of  which 
the  accompanying  figure  was 
reduced.  The  reader  will  ob- 
serve the  peculiar  conforma- 
tion of  this  skull;  the  rude 
massiveness  of  structure,  the 
elevation  of  the  frontal  region, 
the  flatness  of  the  crown,  and 
the  downward  inclination  of 
the   parietal   bones   towards  the  full  and  rounded  occiput. 


Crane  etru.sque. 


The 


222  O.  Miiller,  Abhandlung  der  Berlin,  Aknd.  1818  und  1819,  cited  by  Prichard,  in  "  Re- 
searches," &c,  iii.  256:  —  but,  see,  on  these  philological  and  archaeological  questions, 
M.  Maury's  Chap.  I.,  and  M.  Pulszky's  Chap.  II.,  in  this  volume,  ante. 


314 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


description  of  Miiller  coincides  very  well  with  the  appearance  of 

this  skull. 

Fis-  36-  In  Fig.  36  the  reader  has 

before  him  another  peculiar 
type  —  and  a  unique  speci- 
men—  of  skull,  that  of  the 
Ancient  Phcenicians,  the  sea- 
wanderers  (a  name  their  habits 
suggest  and  justify),  the  bold 
navigators  and  commercial 
traders  of  antiquity,  who,  as 
early  as  the  sixth  century, 
b.  c,  had  dared  the  waters  of 
Phoenician,  the  Atlantic,   and,   perhaps, 

doubled  the  Cape  of  Good 

Hope  in  their  fearless  explorations ;  and  whose  language,  after  being 

lost  for  nearly  two  thousand  years,  has  lately  been  deciphered,  and  its 

long-hidden  secrets  revealed  to  the  world.223 

"I  received  this  highly  interesting  relic,"  says  Dr.  Morton,  "from  M.  F.  Fresnel,  the 
distinguished  French  archaeologist  and  traveller  [since  deceased,  February,  1856,  at 
Bagdad,  in  the  midst  of  Ninevite  explorations],  with  the  following  memorandum,  a.  d. 
1847:  —  'Crane  provenant  des  caves  sepulchrales  de  Ben-Djemma,  dans  Vile  de  Malte. 
Ce  crane  parait  avoir  appartenu  a  un  individu  de  la  race  qui,  dans  les  temps  les  plus 
anciens,  occupait  la  cote  septentrionale  de  VAfrique,  et  les  lies  adjaeentes.'  "224 

This  cranium  is  the  one  alluded  to  in  the  interesting  anecdote 
narrated  by  the  late  Dr.  Patterson,  in  his  graceful  Memoir,  as 
illustrating  the  wonderful  power  of  discrimination,  the  taotus  visus, 
acquired  by  Dr.  Morton  in  his  long  and  critical  study  of  cranio- 
graphy.225  From  this  circumstance,  and  from  the  many  singular 
and  interesting  associations  inseparably  connected  with  its  antiquity, 
its  introduction  here  cannot  fail  to  be  received  with  a  lively  sense 
of  interest  by  those  engaged  in  these  studies.  It  is  in  many  respects 
a  peculiar  skull.  In  a  profile  view,  the  eye  quickly  notices  the 
remarkable  length  of  the  occipito-mental  diameter.  This  feature 
gives  to  the  whole  head  an  elongated  appearance,  which  is  much 
heightened  by  the  general  narrowness  of  the  calvaria,  the  backward 
slope  of  the  occipital  region,  and  the  strong  prognathous  tendency 
of  the  maxillas.  The  contour  of  the  coronal  region  is  a  long  oval, 
which  recalls  to  the  mind  the  kumbe-kephalic  form  of  Wilson. 
The  moderately  well-developed  forehead  is  notable  for  its  regularity. 
In  its  form  and  general  characters  the  face  is  sui  generis.     It  may 


223  See  Pulszky's  Chap.  I.,  p.  129-137,  ante. 

224  See  Morton's  Catalogue  of  Skulls  of  Man  and  the  Inferior  Animals. 
No.  1352. 

225  See  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  xl. 


Philada.,  1849. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  315 

not  inaptly  be  compared  to  a  double  wedge,  for  tbe  facial  bones  are 
not  only  inclined  downwards  and  remarkably  forward,  thus  tapering 
towards  tbe  chin,  bnt  also  in  consequence  of  tbe  flatness  of  tbe 
malar  bones  and  tbe  inferior  maxillary  rami  they  appear  laterally 
compressed,  sloping  gently,  on  both  sides,  from  behind  forwards, 
towards  the  median  line.  The  lower  jaw  is  large,  and  much  thrown 
forwards.  The  slope  of  the  superior  maxilla  forms  an  angle  with 
tbe  horizon  of  about  45°.  Notwithstanding  this  inclination  of  the 
maxilla,  the  incisor  teeth  are  so  curved  as  to  be  nearly  vertical. 
Hence  the  prognathism  of  the  jaws  is  quite  peculiar,  differing,  as  it 
does,  from  that  of  the  Eskimo  cranium  already  alluded  to,  and  from 
the  true  African  skulls  presently  to  be  noticed. 

In  the  consideration  of  European  types,  we  pass  next  to  the  sup- 
posed primeval  home  of  the  human  family.  In  the  mountainous 
but  fertile  region  of  tbe  Caucasus,  extending  from  the  Euxine  to  the 
Caspian  Seas,  dwell  numerous  tribes,  speaking  mutually  unintelli- 
gible languages,  and  differing  in  physical  characters.  From  this 
region  were  the  harems  of  the  Turk  and  Persian  supplied  with  those 
beautiful  Georgian  and  Circassian  females,  who  have,  to  no  small 
extent,  imparted  their  physical  excellence  to  the  former  people. 
Some  idea  of  the  multiplicity  of  languages  spoken  in  this  small  area 
may  be  obtained  from  a  fact  mentioned  by  Pliny,  that  at  Dioscurias, 
a  small  sea-port  town,  the  ancient  commerce  with  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  was  carried  on  through  the  intervention  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty  interpreters. 

This  Caucasian  group  of  races,  comprising  the  Circassian  or  Kabar- 
dian  race,  the  Absne  or  Abassians,  tbe  Oseti  or  Iron,  the  Mizjeji,  the 
Lesgians,  and  the  Georgians,  is  classed  by  Latham,  singularly  enough, 
with  the  Mongoliclse.  In  alluding  to  their  physical  conformation,  he 
speaks  of  them  as  "modified  Mongols,"  although  he  confesses  his 
inability  to  answer  the  patent  physiological  objections  to  such  an 
arrangement  —  objections  based  upon  the  symmetry  of  shape  and 
delicacy  of  complexion  on  the  part  of  the  Georgians  and  Circassians. 

"The  really  scientific  portion  of  these  anatomical  reasons"  (for  connecting  the  above 
group  with  the  European  nations),  says  he,  "consists  in  a  single  fact,  which  was  as  follows: 
— Blumenbach  had  a  solitary  Georgian  skull,  and  that  solitary  Georgian  skull  was  the  finest 
in  his  collection,  that  of  a  Greek  being  the  next.  Hence,  it  was  taken  as  the  type  of  the 
skull  of  the  more  organized  divisions  of  our  species.  More  than  this,  it  gave  its  name  to 
the  type,  and  introduced  the  term  Caucasian.  Never  has  a  single  head  done  more  harm  to 
science  than  was  done  in  the  way  of  posthumous  mischief,  by  the  head  of  this  well-shaped 
female  from  Georgia.  I  do  not  say  that  it  was  not  a  fair  sample  of  all  Georgian  skulls.  It 
might  or  might  not  be.  I  only  lay  before  critics  the  amount  of  induction  that  they  have 
gone  upon."  226 

226  The  Varieties  of  Man,  pp.  105,  111,  108.  The  attention  of  the  reader  is  directed  to 
the  following  paragraph,  descriptive  of  the  Georgian  cranium  referred  to  above.  "The 
form  of  this  head  is  of  such  distinguished  elegance,  that  it  attracts  the  attention  of  all  who 


316 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


Circassian  (764). 


Fig-  37.  Now  Morton's  Collection  con- 

tains four  well-marked  Circas- 
sian heads, — two  male  and  two 
female, — which,  although  they 
do  not  strictly  coincide  in  struc- 
ture and  configuration  with  the 
Georgian  skull,  nevertheless  ap- 
proximate more  decidedly  the 
Japhetic  or  European  form  than 
the  Mongolian,  as  will  be  seen 
by  the  annexed  cut  and  descrip- 
tion of  one  of  these  crania,  that 
of  a  man,  setat.  40  years,  and 
exhibiting  an  internal  capacity  of  90  cubic  inches.  The  calvaria  is 
well  developed  and  regularly  arched,  and  in  size  considerably  exceeds 
the  face.  The  proportions  between  the  vertical,  transverse,  and  lon- 
gitudinal diameters  are  such  as  to  convey  to  the  eye  an  impression 
of  harmony  and  regularity  of  structure.  The  high  and  broad  fore- 
head forms  with  the  parietal  region  a  continuous  and  symmetrical 
convexity.  The  occiput  is  full  and  prominent.  The  face  is  strongly 
marked ;  the  orbits  moderate  in  size ;  the  nasal  bones  prominent ; 
the  malar  bones  small  and  rounded ;  the  teeth  vertical ;  the  maxillae 
of  medium  size,  and  the  chin  prominent.  The  fulness  of  the  face, 
its  oval  contour,  and  general  want  of  angularity,  decidedly  separate 
this  head  from  the  Mongolian  type,  as  represented  by  the  Kalmuck 
skull  already  figured  and  described.  Did  space  permit,  other  differ- 
ences could  readily  be  pointed  out. 

These  characters  accord  very  well  with  the  descriptions  of  these 
people,  given  us  by  different  travellers.  The  Circassians  who  call 
themselves  Attighe  or  Adige  (Zychi  of  the  Greeks  and  Latins,  Tcher- 
kess  of  the  Russians)  have  always  been  celebrated  for  their  personal 
charms.  Mr.  Spencer  says  that,  among  the  ISTottahaizi  tribe,  every 
individual  he  saw  was  decidedly  handsome.227     "  The   men,"  says 

visit  the  collection  in  which  it  is  contained.  The  vertical  and  frontal  regions  form  a  large 
and  smooth  convexity,  which  is  a  little  flattened  at  the  temples ;  the  forehead  is  high  and 
broad,  and  carried  forwards  perpendicularly  over  the  face.  The  cheek-bones  are  small, 
descending  from  the  outer  side  of  the  orbit,  and  gently  turned  back.  The  superciliary 
ridges  run  together  at  the  root  of  the  nose,  and  are  smoothly  continued  into  the  bridge  of 
that  organ,  which  forms  an  elegant  and  finely-turned  arch.  The  alveolar  processes  are 
softly  rounded,  and  the  chin  is  full  and  prominent.  In  the  whole  structure,  there  is  nothing 
rough  or  harsh,  nothing  disagreeably  projecting.  Hence,  it  occupies  a  middle  place  between 
the  two  opposite  extremes,  of  the  Mongolian  variety,  in  which  the  face  is  flattened,  and 
expanded  laterally ;  and  the  Ethiopian,  in  which  the  forehead  is  contracted,  and  the  jaws 
also  are  narrow  and  elongated  anteriorly."  —  Lawrence,  op.  cit.,  p.  228. 
221  Travels  in  Circassia,  ii.,  245. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF    MEN.  317 

Pallas,  "  especially  among  the  higher  classes,  are  mostly  of  a  tall 
stature,  thin  form,  but  Herculean  structure.  They  are  very  slender 
about  the  loins,  have  small  feet,  and  uncommon  strength  in  their 
arms.  They  possess,  in  general,  a  truly  Roman  and  martial  appear- 
ance. The  women  are  not  uniformly  Circassian  beauties,  but  are, 
for  the  most  part,  well  formed,  have  a  white  skin,  dark-brown  or 

black  hair,  and  regular  features I  have  met  with  a  greater 

number  of  beauties  among  them  than  in  any  other  unpolished 
nation."228  Says  Klaproth, — "  They  have  brown  hair  and  eyes,  long 
faces,  thin,  straight  noses,  and  elegant  forms." ^  "Their  profile 
approaches  nearest  the  Grecian  model,"  writes  Morton,  "  and  falls 
little  short  of  the  beau-ideal  of  classic  sculpture."230  The  Abassians, 
probably  autochthones  of  the  north-west  Caucasus,  —  "  are  distin- 
guished from  all  the  neighbouring  nations  by  their  narrow  faces,  by 
the  figure  of  their  heads,  which  are  compressed  on  both  sides,  by  the 
shortness  of  the  lower  part  of  the  face,  by  their  prominent  noses  and 
dark-brown  hair."231  From  all  accounts,  the  Georgians,  "a  people 
of  European  features  and  form,"  are  but  little,  if  at  all,  inferior  to 
the  Circassians  in  physical  endowments.  According  to  Reineggs, 
the  Georgian  women  are  even  more  beautiful  than  the  Circassians.232 
"Le  sang  de  Georgie,"  says  Chardin,  "est  le  plus  beau  de  l'Orient, 
et  je  puis  dire,  du  monde.  Je  n'ai  pas  remarque  un  visage  laid  en 
ce  pays-M,  parmi  l'un  et  1' autre  sexe,  mais  j'y  en  ai  vu  d'ange- 
liques."233 

The  extreme  south-eastern  section  of  the  European  ethnic  area, 
occupying  mainly  the  table-land  of  Iran,  is  represented  in  the  Mor- 
tonian  Collection  by  six  Armenian,  two  Persian,  and  one  Aflghan 
skull.  A  general  family  resemblance  pervades  all  these  crania. 
They  are  all,  with  one  exception,  remarkable  for  the  smallness  of  the 
face,  and  shortness  of  head.  In  the  Armenian  skull,  the  forehead  is 
narrow  but  well  formed,  the  convexity  expanding  upwards  and  back- 
wards towards  the  parietal  protuberances,  and  laterally  towards  the 
temporal  bones.  The  greatest  transverse  diameter  is  between  the 
parietal  bosses.  This  feature,  combined  with  the  flatness  of  the  oc- 
ciput, gives  to  the  coronal  region  an  outline  somewhat  resembling  a 
triangle  with  all  three  angles  truncated,  and  the  base  of  the  triangle 
looking  posteriorly.  In  fact,  the  whole  form  of  the  calvaria  is  such 
as  to  impress  the  mind  of  the  observer  with  a  sense  of  squareness 

228  Travels  in  Southern  Provinces  of  the  Russian  Empire,  I.  398. 

229  Travels  in  Caucasian  Countries. 

230  Crania  Americana,  p.  8.  m  Klaproth,  Caucasus,  p.  257. 

232  Allgemeine  historische-topographische  Beschreibung  des  Knukasus. 

233  Voyages  en  Perse,  I.,  171. 


318  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

and  angularity.  The  dimensions  of  the  orbits  are  moderate ;  the 
malar  bones  small,  flat,  and  retreating;  the  zygomatic  processes 
slender,  and  the  general  expression  of  the  face  resembling  that  of  the 
Circassians,  from  which  latter  it  differs  in  being  shorter.  The  Per- 
sian head  is  less  angular,  the  frontal  region  broader,  the  occiput 
fuller,  and  the  malar  bones  larger.  The  lower  jaw  is  small  and 
rather  round.  The  Affghan  skull  —  that  of  a  boy,  aged  about  six- 
teen years — resembles,  in  several  respects,  the  Hindoo  type  already 
described. 

The  Syro-Arabian  or  Semitic  race,  comprising  the  Arabians,  As- 
syrians, Chaldseans,  Hebrews,  and  cognate  tribes,  also  falls  within 
the  European  area. 

"  The  physical  conformation  of  the  Arabs  proper,"  says  Morton, 
"  is  not  very  unlike  that  of  their  neighbors,  the  Circassians,  although, 
especially  in  the  women,  it  possesses  much  less  of  the  beautiful.  .  .  . 
The  Arab  face  is  a  somewhat  elongated  oval,  with  a  delicately-pointed 
chin,  and  a  high  forehead.  Their  eyes  are  large,  dark,  and  full  of 
vivacity ;  their  eye-brows  are  finely  arched ;  the  nose  is  narrow  and 
gently  aquiline,  the  lips  thin,  and  the  mouth  small  and  expressive."234 
In  another  place,  he  says :  "  The  head  (of  the  southern  or  peninsular 
Arabs)  is,  moreover,  comparatively  small,  and  the  forehead  rather 
narrow  and  sensibly  receding ;  to  which  may  often  be  added  a  meagre 
and  angular  figure,235  long,  slender  limbs,  and  large  knees."236  Mr. 
Frazer  thus  describes  the  physiognomy  of  the  genuine  Arabs.  "  The 
countenance  was  generally  long  and  thin ;  the  forehead  moderately 
high,  with  a  rounded  protuberance  near  its  top ;  the  nose  aquiline ; 
the  mouth  and  chin  receding,  giving  to  the  line  of  the  profile  a  cir- 
cular rather  than  a  straight  character;  the  eye  deep  set  under  the 
brow,  dark,  and  bright."237  According  to  De  Pages,  the  Arabs  of 
the  desert  between  Bassora  and  Damascus  have  a  large,  ardent,  black 
eye,  a  long  face,  features  high  and  regular,  and,  as  the  result  of  the 
whole,  a  physiognomy  peculiarly  stern  and  severe."238 

The  famous  Baron  Larret  asserts  that  the  skulls  of  the  Arabians 
display  "  a  most  perfect  development  of  all  the  internal  organs,  as 

well  as  of  those  which  belong  to  the  senses Independently 

of  the  elevation  of  the  vault  of  the  cranium,  and  its  almost  spherical 
form,  the  surface  of  the  jaws  is  of  great  extent,  and  lies  in  a  straight 
or  perpendicular  line ;  the  orbits,  likewise,  are  wider  than  they  are 

234  Cran.  Americana,  p.  18. 

235  "Tontes  leurs  formes  sont  anguleuses,"  says  Denon;   "leur  barbe  courte  et  &  meches 
pointues."      Voyage  en  Egypte,  I.,  p.  92. 

236  Cran.  JEgyptiaca,  p.  47.  237  Narrative  of  a  Journey  in  Khorasan. 
238  Travels  round  the  World. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF    MEN. 


319 


usually  seen  in  the  crania  of  Europeans,  and  they  are  somewhat  less 
inclined  backwards ;  the  alveolar  arches  are  of  moderate  size,  and 
they  are  well  supplied  with  very  white  and  regular  teeth ;  the  canines, 
especially,  project  but  little.  The  Arabs  eat  little,  and  seldom  of 
animal  food.  We  are  also  convinced  that  the  bones  of  the  cranium 
are  thinner  in  the  Arab  than  in  other  races,  and  more  dense  in 
proportion  to  their  size,  which  is  proved  by  their  greater  transpa- 
rency."239 

The  reader  will  obtain  some  idea  of  the  Arabian  cranial  type  from 
the  subjoined  figure,  representing  several  Bedawees  of  the  Isthmus 
of  Suez  (Nos.  766-770,  of  the  Mortonian  Collection.) 

Fig.  38. 


Akabs  (B^dawes  of  Isthmus). 

Figs.  39  and  40  represent  the  profile  and  facial  views  of  an  ancient 
Assyrian  skull,  obtained,  by  Dr.  Layakd,  from  an  ancient  mound, 


Fig.  39. 


Fig.  40. 


Ancient  Assteian. 


and  now  deposited  in  the  British  Museum.  The  representations 
here  given  are  reductions  from  natural-size  drawings  sent  to  Dr. 
ISTott  by  Mr.  J.  B.  Davis,  of  Shelton,   Staffordshire,  who,  in  an 


2S9  Comptes  Rendus,  t.  6,  p.  774. 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


accompanying  letter,  vouches  for  their  general  accuracy  and  faith- 
fulness to  nature. 

"  This  skull,"  says  Dr.  Nott,  "isTery  interesting,  in  several  points  of  view.     Its  immense 
size  confirms  history  by  showing  that  none  but  a  high  '  Caucasian'  race  could  have  achieved 
so  much  greatness.     The  measurements  taken  from  the  drawing  are  — 
Longitudinal  diameter,  7J  inches. 
Transverse  "  5f      " 

Vertical  "  5£      " 

"  It  is  probable  that  the  parietal  diameter  is  larger  than  the  measurement  here  given ; 
because,  possessor  of  only  front  and  profile  views,  I  think  these  may  not  express  fairly 
the  posterior  parts  of  the  head.  There  are  but  two  heads  in  Morton's  whole  Egyptian 
series  of  equal  size,  and  these  are  'Pelasgic;'  nor  more  than  two  equally  large  throughout 
his  American  series.  Daniel  Webster's  head  measured — longitudinal  diameter,  7-J  inches; 
transverse,  5| ;  vertical,  5 J :  and  comparison  will  show  that  the  Assyrian  head  is  but  a 
fraction  the  smaller  of  the  two.240 

"  This  Assyrian  head,  moreover,  is  remarkable  for  its  close  resemblance  to  several  of 
Morton's  Egyptian  series,  classed  under  the  '  Pelasgic  form.'  It  thus  adds  another 
powerful  confirmation  to  the  fact  this  volume  ('Types  of  Mankind')  establishes,  viz., 
that  the  Egyptians,  at  all  monumental  times,  were  a  mixed  people,  and  in  all  historical 
ages  were  much  amalgamated  with  Chaldaic  races.  Any  one,  familiar  with  crania,  who 
will  compare  this  Assyrian  head  with  the  beautiful  Egyptian  series  lithographed  in  the 
Crania  JEgypliaca,  cannot  fail  to  be  struck  with  its  resemblance  to  many  of  the  latter,  even 
more  forcibly  than  anatomists  will,  through  our  small,  if  accurate,  wood-cuts." 

Kg.  41.  The  familiar  Hebraic  type  is  very 

well  shown  in  Fig.  41  (No.  842  of  the 
Mortonian  Collection),  representing  a 
mummied  cranium,  taken  from  an 
Egyptian  sepulchre.  "  This  head," 
writes  Morton,  "possesses  great  in- 
terest, on  account  of  its  decided  He- 
brew features,  of  which  many  ex- 
amples are  extant  on  the  monu- 
ments" (of  Egypt).  The  fragmentary 
colossal  head  from  Kouyunjik  (Fig.  42,  on  next  page),  affords  an  excel- 
lent idea  of  the  higher  and  more  ancient  Chaldaeic  type. 

I  hasten  to  complete  the  consideration  of  Caucasian  types  by  refer- 
ring briefly  to  the  peculiarities  presented  by  Egyptian  crania.     Dr. 

210  But  even  the  head  of  Webster  is  surpassed  by  the  skull  of  a  German  baker,  in  the 
Museum  of  the  University  of  Louisville,  which  Prof.  T.  G.  Richardson,  with  the  assistance 
of  Prof.  B.  Silliman,  Jr.,  found  to  possess  the  extraordinary  internal  capacity  of  125.77 
cubic  inches,  and  to  present  the  following  external  measurements : 

Occipitofrontal,  or  longitudinal  diameter 8J-  inches. 

Bi-parietal,  or  transverse  diameter 6J 

Vertical  diameter , 6i 

Circumference 23  J 

Over  the  vertex,  between  the  centres  of  the  auditory  meatuses...   14f 
See  Elements  of  Human  Anatomy.     By  T.  G.  Richardson,  M.  D.     Philada.,  1854,  p.  167. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


321 


Morton's  severely  learned  and  ac-  Fis-  42. 

curate  labors  in  this  field  are  too 
well  known  to  the  scientific  world 
to  render  necessary  in  this  place  any 
lengthened  craniographic  description 
of  the  exceedingly  ancient  and  highly 
civilized  occupants  of  the  classic  Nilo- 
tic a  Tellus.  Premising  that  the  popu- 
lation of  Egypt,  even  in  very  remote 
times,  was  exceedingly  mixed,  that 
the  ancient  sepulchres  of  the  Nile 
contain  Negroid  as  well  as  Caucasian 
crania,  and  that,  among  the  latter, 
Morton  distinguished  three  distinct 
forms  or  varieties — the  Egyptian  pro- 
per, the  Pelasgic,  and  Semitic,  —  I 
proceed  to  give  the  reader  some  idea  of  the  first  two  of  these  varieties, 
by  means  of  the  following  concise  exfracts  and  expressive  illustrations, 
taken  at  random  from  Crania  ^Egyptiaca. 

"  The  Egyptian  form  differs  from  the  Pelasgic  in  having  a  narrow 
and  more  receding  forehead,  while,  the  face  being  more  prominent, 
the  facial  angle  is  consequently  less.  The  nose  is  straight  or  aqui- 
line, the  face  angular,  the  features  often  sharp,  and  the  hair  uniformly 
long,  soft,  and  curling The  subjoined  wood-cut  (Eig.  43) 


Fie.  43. 


Fi« 


fifii 

flitfli 


"-■:■, 


Fig.  45. 


Fig.  46. 


21 


322 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


illustrates  a  remarkable  head,  which  may  serve  as  a  type  of  the  genu- 
ine Egyptian  conformation.  The  long  oval  cranium,  the  receding 
forehead,  gently  aquiline  nose,  and  retracted  chin,  together  with  the 
marked  distance  between  the  nose  and  mouth,  and  the  long,  smooth 
hair,  are  all  characteristic  of  the  monumental  Egyptian,"  and  well 
shown  in  Eigs.  44,  45,  46  (retro).  "  To  this  we  may  add,  that  the  most 
deficient  part  of  the  Egyptian  skull  is  the  coronal  region,  which  is 
extremely  low,  while  the  posterior  chamber  is  remarkably  full  and 
prominent." 

The  Pelasgic  form  is  represented  in  Eig.  47  —  "A  beautifully- 
formed  head,  with  a  forehead  high,  full, 
and  nearly  vertical,  a  good  coronal  region, 
and  largely  developed  occiput.  The  nasal 
bones  are  long  and  straight,  and  the  whole 
facial  structure  delicately  proportioned. 
Age  between  30  and  35  years.  Internal 
capacity  88  cubic  inches;  facial  angle  81°. 
Pelasgic  form," — and  in  Eig.  48,  —  "Head 


Fig.  47. 


Fig.  48. 


Fig.  49. 


of  a  woman  of  thirty,  of  a  fault- 
less Caucasian  mould.  The  hair, 
which  is  in  profusion,  is  of  a  dark 
brown  tint,  and  delicately  curled. 

Pelasgic  form."  Eig.  49,  originally  delineated  in  Napoleon's  Description 
de  VEgypte,  admirably  illustrates  the  Egyptian  type  or  configuration. 
Of  the  Eellahs  of  Lower  Egypt,  the  lineal  descendants  of  the  ancient 
rural  Egyptians,  an  excellent  idea  may  be  obtained  from,  the  engrav- 
ing on  next  page  (Fig.  50),  representing  five  skulls  of  this  people. 
"  The  skull  of  the  Fellah  is  strikingly  like  that  of  the  ancient  Egyp- 
tian. It  is  long,  narrow,  somewhat  flattened  on  the  sides,  and  very 
prominent  in  the  occiput.  The  coronal  region  is  low,  the  forehead 
moderately  receding,  the  nasal  bones  long  and  nearly  straight,  the 
cheek-bones  small,  the  maxillary  region  slightly  prognathous,  and 
the  whole  cranial  structure  thin  and  delicate.     But,  notwithstanding 


OF     THE     RACES    OF     MEN. 
Fig.  50. 


323 


these  resemblances  between  the  Fellah  and  Egyptian  skulls,  the  latter 
possess  what  may  be  called  an  osteological  expression  peculiar  to 
themselves,  and  not  seen  in  the  Fellah." 

According  to  Pruner,  the  skull  of  the  Fellah  is  broader  and 
thicker  than  that  of  the  Arab.241 

Fig.  51  represents  a  Coptic  cranium,  which  Morton  describes  as 
"elongated,  narrow,  but  Y    51 

otherwise  mediately  de- 
veloped in  front,  with 
great  breadth  and  fulness 
in  the  whole  posterior  re- 
gion. The  nasal  bones, 
though  prominent,  are 
broad,  short,  and  concave, 
and  the  upper  jaw  is 
everted.  There  is  also  a 
remarkable  distance  be- 
tween the  eyes."242 

Turn  we  now  to  the  consideration  of  the  human  skull-types  cha- 
racterizing the  so-called  African  Realm  —  a  region  cut  off,  as  it  were, 
from  the  rest  of  the  world  by  the  vast  Saharan  Desert,  once  the  bed 
of  an  ancient  ocean,  but  now  constituting  a  natural  line  of  demarca- 
tion between  the  organic  worlds  of  Europe  and  Africa. 

A  glance  at  a  large  chart  or  map  of  the  African  continent,  as  at 
present  known  to  us,  reveals  the  various  races  or  nations  of  this 
part  of  the  world,  distributed  in  a  somewhat  triangular  manner. 
The  apex  of  this  triangle,  composed  of  the  Hottentot  family,  coin- 
cides with  the  southern  extremity  of  the  continent ;  the  two  sides 
are  represented  by  the  tribes  of  the  western  and  eastern  coasts ; 
while  the  base,  skirting  the  sands  of  Sahara,  and  stretching  from 


241  Die  Ueberbleibsel  der  altagyptischen  Menschenra9e.    Von  Dr.  Franz  Pruner,  Miinchen, 
1846,  p.  13. 

242  Crania  iEgyptiaca,  p.  57. 


324  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

the  Atlantic  Ocean  to  the  Red  Sea,  north  of  the  Mountains  of  the 
Moon,  is  composed  of  numerous  and  diversified  tribes,  who,  under 
the  influences  of  Arabian,  Berber,  and  other  foreign  immigrations, 
have  assumed,  in  general,  a  higher  character  than  those  of  the  South 
African  family.  This  triangular  area  of  African  types  incloses  a 
terra  incognita,  towards  which  the  ethnologist  already  looks  for 
remarkable  revelations.243  It  would  require  many  pages  to  describe 
the  cranial  characters  of  the  numerous  indigenous  and  exotic  tribes 
—  some  exceedingly  ancient,  and  some  quite  modern  —  which  the 
traveller  beholds  in  journeying  from  Cape  Verde  to  Abyssinia,  thence 
to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  so  to  the  point  of  departure  on  the 
western  coast.  A  very  brief  representation,  therefore,  of  some  of 
the  principal  cranial  types  must  here  suffice. 

Bltjmenbach  has  already  commented  upon  the  number  and  diversity 
of  African  skull-forms.  He  figures  six  African  heads  in  the  Decades, 
all  differing  from  each  other  in  frontal  development,  prominence 
of  the  maxilla?,  configuration  of  chin,  &c.  This  diversity  of  form 
is  still  better  shown  by  the  African  heads  contained  in  the  Mortonian 
Collection ;  from  which  series  I  select,  as  the  peculiar  type  of  Africa, 
not  the  highest,  but  a  specimen  of  the  lowest  form  —  that  of  the 
woolly-haired,  prognathous  man,  the  true  Negro  (Eig.  52,  on  next 
page).  In  doing  so,  I  but  follow  the  example  of  Lawrence,  and  the 
advice  of  Muller,  Zeune,  and  others.     That  the  head  here  figured 

243  At  a  meeting  of  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadelphia,  held  October  16th, 
1855,  "  Mr.  Cassin  announced,  that  M.  Duchaillu  was  about  to  return  to  Western  Africa,  for 
the  purpose,  exclusively,  of  geographical  exploration,  and  the  collection  of  objects  of  Natural 
History.  Arrangements  have  been  made  to  secure,  for  the  cabinet  of  this  Society,  the 
collections  of  Birds  especially,  and  also  of  some  other  objects.  Mr.  Cassin  explained  the 
general  design  of  the  Expedition,  -which  was  to  pass  from  Cape  Lopez,  1°  S.  latitude, 
towards  the  supposed  source  of  the  Congo  River,  with  the  intention  of  attempting  to  reach 
its  source.  Mr.  Duchaillu  has  already  penetrated  farther  into  the  interior  of  this  part 
of  Africa  than  any  other  white  man.  The  coast  is  unknown  farther  inland  than  from 
twenty  to  twenty-five  miles,  except  to  slavers,  there  having  been  no  exploration  of  that 
part  of  Africa.  M.  Duchaillu  had  been  on  the  Rivers  Moonda  and  Mouni,  had  traced  the 
latter  to  its  source,  and  had  ascertained  the  existence  of  high  mountains,  probably  a  con- 
tinuation or  spur  of  the  Atlas  range,  and  much  further  south  than  is  to  be  found  in  any 
published  maps.  Another  fact  ascertained  by  him,  is  the  existence  of  a  very  populous 
nation,  of  marked  Negro  character,  known  as  the  Powein  Nation,  which  he  estimates  at 
from  five  to  seven  millions.  Their  country  extends  across  from  the  sources  of  the  Moonda, 
probably  to  the  sources  of  the  Nile,  and  the  nation  is  probably  that  mentioned  by  Bruce,  as 
occasionally  descending  the  Nile.  It  is  a  warlike  and  cannibal  nation,  engaged  in  agri- 
culture, not  wandering,  resembling  in  this  respect  the  Ashantees  and  Dahomeys.  It  dis- 
plays the  highest  degree  of  civilization  yet  observed  among  the  true  Negroes,  presenting 
an  analogy  to  the  Feejees,  among  the  Oceanic  nations.  M.  Duchaillu  possesses  peculiar 
advantages  as  an  explorer.  He  has  lived  long  in  the  country,  is  entirely  acclimated,  speaks 
well  two  of  the  languages,  and  understands  thoroughly  the  Negro  character.  He  proposes 
to  proceed  merely  with  convoys  of  natives  from  each  tribe  successively  to  the  next." 


OF     THE     KACES     OF     MEN.  325 

(No.    983   of   the    Collection)   is  Fig.  52. 

neither  an  unusual  nor  exagge- 
rated form,  is  rendered  evident 
by  comparing  it  with  the  Creole 
Negro  given  in  the  first  volume  of 
Prichard's  laborious  Researches 
into  the  Physical  History  of  Man- 
kind, with  the  drawings  of  Sandi- 
fort,244  and  Camper,245  or  with  the 
skull  represented  on  Plate  VIII.  Negko. 

of  Lawrence' 's  Lectures.     Indeed, 

this  latter  drawing  presents  a  more  degraded  form  than  the  accom- 
panying figure.  The  general  typical  resemblance,  however,  is  so 
great,  that  I  transcribe,  without  hesitation  and  for  self-evident  rea- 
sons, the  following  description  by  Lawrence  : 

"  The  front  of  the  head,  including  the  forehead  and  face,  is  compressed  laterally,  and 
considerably  elongated  towards  the  front;  hence  the  length  of  the  whole  skull,  from  the 
teeth  to  the  occiput,  is  considerable.  It  forms,  in  this  respect,  the  strongest  contrast  to 
that  globular  shape  which  some  of  the  Caucasian  races  present,  and  which  is  very  remark- 
able in  the  Turk.  —  The  capacity  of  the  cranium  is  reduced,  particularly  in  its  front 
part.  .  .  .  The  face,  on  the  contrary,  is  enlarged.  The  frontal  bone  is  shorter,  and,  as 
well  as  the  parietal,  less  excavated  and  less  capacious  than  in  the  European ;  the  temporal 
ridge  mounts  higher,  and  the  space  which  it  includes  is  much  more  considerable.  The 
front  of  the  skull  seems  compressed  into  a  narrow  keel-like  form  between  the  two  powerful 
temporal  muscles,  which  rise  nearly  to  the  highest  part  of  the  head ;  and  has  a  compressed 
figure,  which  is  not  equally  marked  in  the  entire  head,  on  account  of  the  thickness  of  the 
muscles.  Instead  of  the  ample  swell  of  the  forehead  and  vertex,  which  rises  between  and 
completely  surmounts  the  comparatively  weak  temporal  muscles  of  the  European,  we  often 
see  only  a  small  space  left  between  the  two  temporal  ridges  in  the  Ethiopian.  —  The  fora- 
men magnum  is  larger,  and  lies  farther  back  in  the  head ;  the  other  openings  for  the 
passage  of  the  nerves  are  larger.  —  The  bony  substance  is  denser  and  harder ;  the  sides 
of  the  skull  thicker,  and  the  whole  weight  consequently  more  considerable.  —  The  bony 
apparatus  employed  in  mastication,  and  in  forming  receptacles  for  the  organs  of  sense,  is 
larger,  stronger,  and  more  advantageously  constructed  for  powerful  effect,  than  in  the 
races  where  more  extensive  use  of  experience  and  reason,  and  greater  civilization,  supply 
the  place  of  animal  strength.  —  If  the  bones  of  the  face  in  the  Negro  were  taken  as  a  basis, 
and  a  cranium  were  added  to  them  of  the  same  relative  magnitude  which  it  possesses  in  the 
European,  a  receptacle  for  the  brain  would  be  required  much  larger  than  in  the  latter  case. 
However,  we  find  it  considerably  smaller.  Thus  the  intellectual  part  is  lessened,  the  ani- 
mal organs  are  enlarged:  proportions  are  produced  just  opposite  to  those  which  are  found 
in  the  Grecian  ideal  model.  .  .  .  The  narrow,  low,  and  slanting  forehead,  and  the  elonga- 
tion of  the  jaws  into  a  kind  of  muzzle,  give  to  this  head  an  animal  character,  which  cannot 
escape  the  most  cursory  examination.  ...  It  is  sufficiently  obvious,  that  on  a  vertical 

«*  Museum  Acad.  Lugd.  Batav.,  t.  1,  tab.  3. 

245  Dissertat  sur  les  Varietfe  Naturelles,  &c,  tab.  I.,  fig.  3.  —  Since  writing  the  above,  a 
number  of  human  crania  and  casts,  formerly  belonging  to  Dr.  Harlan's  Collection,  have 
been  presented  to  the  Academy,  by  Mr.  Harlan.  Among  these,  is  the  cast  of  a  Mozambique 
skull,  closely  resembling  the  heads  above  alluded  to. 


326  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

antero-posterior  section  of  the  head,  the  area  of  the  face  will  be  more  considerable  in  pro- 
portion to  that  of  the  cranium,  in  such  a  skull,  than  in  the  fine  European  forms.  —  The 
larger  and  stronger  jaws  require  more  powerful  muscles.  The  temporal  fossa  is  much 
larger ;  the  ridge  which  bounds  it  rises  higher  on  the  skull,  and  is  more  strongly  marked, 
than  in  the  European.  The  thickness  of  the  muscular  mass  may  be  estimated  from  the 
bony  arch,  within  which  it  descends  to  the  lower  jaw.  The  zygoma  is  larger,  stronger, 
and  more  capacious  in  the  Negro ;  the  cheek-bones  project  remarkably,  and  are  very 
strong,  broad,  and  thick:  hence  they  afford  space  for  the  attachment  of  powerful  mas- 
seters.  —  The  orbits,  and  particularly  their  external  apertures,  are  capacious.  —  Both 
entrances  to  the  nose  are  more  ample,  the  cavity  itself  considerably  more  capacious,  the 
plates  and  windings  of  the  ethmoid  bone  more  complicated,  the  cribriform  lamella  more 
extensive,  than  in  the  European.  The  ossa  nasi  are  flat  and  short,  instead  of  forming  the 
bridge-like  convexity  which  we  see  in  the  European.  They  run  together  above  into  an 
acute  angle,  which  makes  them  considerably  resemble  the  single  triangular  nasal  bone 
of  the  monkey.  .  .  .  The  superior  maxillary  bone  is  remarkably  prolonged  in  front ;  its  alveo- 
lar portion  and  the  included  incisor  teeth  are  oblique,  instead  of  being  perpendicular,  as  in 
the  European.  The  nasal  spine  at  the  entrance  of  the  nose  is  either  inconsiderable,  or 
entirely  deficient.  The  palatine  arch  is  longer  and  more  elliptical.  The  alveolar  edge 
of  the  lower  jaw  stands  forward,  like  that  of  the  upper ;  and  this  part  in  both  is  narrow, 
elongated,  and  elliptical.  The  chin,  instead  of  projecting  equally  with  the  teeth,  as  it 
does  in  the  European,  recedes  considerably  like  that  of  the  monkey.  —  The  characters 
of  the  Ethiopian  variety,  as  observed  in  the  genuine  Negro  tribes,  may  be  thus  summed 
up :  1.  Narrow  and  depressed  forehead ;  the  entire  cranium  contracted  anteriorly :  the 
cavity  less,  both  in  its  circumference  and  transverse  measurements.  2.  Occipital  foramen 
and  condyles  placed  farther  back.  3.  Large  space  for  the  temporal  muscles.  4.  Great 
development  of  the  face.  5.  Prominence  of  the  jaws  altogether,  and  particularly  of  their 
alveolar  margins  and  teeth  ;  consequent  obliquity  of  the  facial  line.  6.  Superior  incisors 
slanting.  7.  Chin  receding.  8.  Very  large  and  strong  zygomatic  arch  projecting  towards 
the  front.  9.  Large  nasal  cavity.  10.  Small  and  flattened  ossa  nasi,  sometimes  consoli- 
dated, and  running  into  a  point  above.  — In  all  the  particulars  just  enumerated,  the  Negro 
structure  approximates  unequivocally  to  that  of  the  Monkey.  It  not  only  differs  from  the 
Caucasian  model,  but  is  distinguished  from  it  in  two  respects ;  the  intellectual  characters 
are  reduced,  the  animal  features  enlarged,  and  exaggerated.  In  such  a  skull  as  that  repre- 
sented in  the  eighth  plate,  wkick,  indeed,  has  been  particularly  selected,  because  it  is  strongly 
characterized,  no  person,  however  little  conversant  with  natural  history  or  physiology,  could 
fail  to  recognize  a  decided  approach  to  the  animal  form.  This  inferiority  of  organization 
is  attended  with  corresponding  inferiority  of  faculties ;  which  may  be  proved,  not  so  much 
by  the  unfortunate  beings  who  are  degraded  by  slavery,  as  by  every  fact  in  the  past  history 
and  present  condition  of  Africa."246 

Thus  much  for  the  cranial  physique  of  the  genuine  tropical  Negro. 
The  tribes  oi  "Western  Africa  present  us  with  higher  forms  of  the 
skull,  and  less  degraded  physical  and  intellectual  traits.  These 
tribes,  divided  by  a  recent  writer  and  zealous  missionary,  the  Rev. 
J.  L.  Wilson,  into  the  Senegambians,  and  the  Northern  and  Southern 
Guineans,247  for  the  most  part  dwell  in  small  isolated  communities, 
each  composed  of  a  few  villages,  and  having  an  aggregate  population 
varying  from  two  to  thirty  thousand.    Even  the  kingdoms  of  Ashantee 

"«  Op.  cit.,  pp.  242,  3,  4-6. 

2J?  Ethnographic  View  of  Western  Africa. 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN.  827 

and  Dahomey,  the  largest  political  organizations  of  Western  Africa, 
are  not  superior  in  population  and  extent  of  territory  to  some  of  the 
smaller  European  kingdoms.  According  to  Wilson,  the  inhabitants 
of  this  region  have  fixed  habitations,  cultivate  the  soil,  have  herds 
of  domestic  animals,  and  have  made  very  considerable  progress  in 
most  of  the  mechanic  arts.  That  the  various  tribes  differ  remarkably 
from  each  other  in  physiognomical  characters,  will  be  seen  from  the 
following  condensed  notice  of  some  of  the  principal  families. 

The  Mandingoes,  a  commercial  people  occupying  the  country  in 
which  the  Niger  takes  its  rise,  extending  through  the  kingdoms  of 
Bambouk,  Bambara,  and  Wuli,  and,  in  smaller  or  larger  groups,  cover- 
ing all  the  country  from  Jalakonda  to  the  sea-coast,  are  described  by 
Wilson  as  "men  of  tall  stature,  slender,  but  well-proportioned,  black 
complexion,  and  woolly  hair,  but  with  much  more  regular  features 
than  belong  to  the  true  Negro."  According  to  Goldberry,  they 
resemble  more  the  blacks  of  India,  than  those  of  Africa.248  "  The 
appearance  of  the  Mandingoes,"  says  Major  Laing,  "is  engaging; 
their  features  are  regular  and  open ;  their  persons  well-formed  and 
comely,  averaging  a  height  rather  above  the  common." 

The  Fulahs  inhabit  Fuladu,  north-west  of  Manding,  the  region 
between  the  sources  of  the  Senegal  and  Niger,  and  the  three  large 
Senegambian  provinces,  Futa-Torro,  Futa-Bondu,  and  Futa-Jallon, 
extending  also  towards  the  heart  of  Soudan.  The  origin  and  purity 
of  this  peculiar  people  have  been  much  discussed.  Linguistically 
and  physically,  they  are  distinct  from  the  surrounding  tribes  over 
whom  they  rule.  They  deny  their  Negro  origin,  and  consider  them- 
selves a  mixed  race.  However,  "  their  physical  type  of  character  is 
too  permanent,  and  of  too  long  standing,  to  admit  of  the  idea  of  an 
intermixture.  In  all  mixed  races,  there  is  a  strong  and  constant 
tendency  to  one  or  the  other  of  the  parent  types,  and  it  is  difficult  to 
point  out  a  mixed  breed  that  has  held  an  intermediate  character  for 
any  considerable  time,  especially  when  it  has  been  entirely  cut  off 
from  the  sources  whence  it  derived  its  being.  But  the  Fulahs  are 
now,  in  all  their  physical  characteristics,  just  what  they  have  been 
for  many  centuries.  And  it  would  seem,  therefore,  that  their  com- 
plexion, and  other  physical  traits,  entitle  them  to  as  distinct  and 
independent  a  national  character  as  either  the  Arab  or  Negro,  from 
the  union  of  which  it  is  supposed  that  they  have  received  their 
origin."219  Goldberry  informs  us  that  the  color  of  their  skin  is  a 
kind  of  reddish  black;  their  countenances  are  regular,  and  their 
hair  is  longer,  and  not  so  woolly,  as  that  of  the  common  Negroes ; 

243  Travels  in  Africa,  Vol.  I.  p.  74.  •»  Wilson,  op.  cit,  p.  7. 


328  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

their  language  is  altogether  different  from  that  of  the  nations  hy 
whom  they  are  surrounded  —  it  is  more  elegant  and  sonorous."250 
Mollien,  relying  upon  traditions  extant  about  the  Senegal,  thinks 
that  the  Fulahs  migrated  along  with  the  Jalofs  from  North  Africa, 
whence  they  were  expelled  by  the  Moors."251  D'Eichthal  assigns 
them  a  Malayan  origin;252  but  the  inquiries  of  Hodgson  negative 
this  opinion.253  The  Jalofs,  a  compact  and  limited  people,  occupying 
all  the  maritime  districts  of  Senegambia,  as  well  as  a  large  part  of 
the  interior,  number  one  million  souls,  who  are  distributed  into  four 
sections,  —  those  of  Cayor,  Sin,  Salem,  and  Brenk.  They  are  the 
most  northern,  as  well  as  the  most  comely,  of  all  the  west-coast 
Negroes,  and,  according  to  Goldberry,  are  robust  and  well-made ; 
their  features  are  regular ;  their  color  a  deep  and  transparent  black ; 
hair  crisped  and  woolly ;  nose  rather  round ;  lips  thick.254  The  Vai 
family,  comprising  the  Timanis,  Bulloms,  Deys,  Condoes,  Golahs, 
and  Mendas,  is  one  of  the  principal  families  of  North  Guinea.  They 
"  are  very  black,  of  slender  frames,  but  with  large  and  well-formed 
heads,  and  of  a  decidedly  intellectual  cast  of  countenance."  The 
Manou,  or  Kroo  family,  comprises  the  Bassas,  Fish,  Kroo  proper, 
Sestos,  Grebo,  Drewin,  and  St.  Andrew's  people,  tribes  occupying 
the  Liberian  coast,  between  the  Bassa  and  St.  Andrew's  rivers. 
"  The  person  of  the  Kruman  is  large,  square-built,  and  remarkably 
erect.  He  has  an  open  and  manly  countenance,  and  his  gait  is 
impressively  dignified  and  independent.  His  head,  however,  is 
small  and  peaked,  and  is  not  indicative  of  high  intellectual  capa- 
city." The  Quaquas,  with  dark  complexions,  and  very  large,  round 
heads;  the  Asbantees,  of  the  Inta  or  Amina  family,  presenting 
more  decided  Negro  characteristics  than  the  other  tribes  of  this 
region ;  the  Dahomey  family ;  and  finally,  the  Benin  tribes,  a  very 
black  race  of  savages,  inhabiting  the  country  between  Lagos  and 
the  Kamerun  Mountains,  complete  our  rapid  glance  at  the  people 
of  Northern  Guinea. 

The  above-mentioned  families  are  represented  in  the  Mortonian 
Collection,  by  skulls  of  the  Mina,  Dey,  Grebo,  Bassa,  Golah,  Pessah, 
Kroo,  and  Eboe  tribes. 

The  Golah  skull  (No.  1093),  is  remarkable  for  its  massiveness  and 
density.     The  calvaria  is  well-formed,  expanding  from  the  frontal 

*o  Op.  cit,  Vol.  I.  p.  72.  ffil  Voyages  en  Afrique,  t.  I.  et  II. 

262  Histoire  et  Origine  des  Foulahs  on  Fellans.  Par  Gustave  d'Eichthal  —  in  Memoires 
de  la  SoeiSte'  Ethnologique,  t.  I. 

253  Notes  on  Northern  Africa,  the  Sahara  and  Soudan.  By  Wm,  B.  Hodgson.  New 
York,  1844. 

»*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  74-75. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  329 

region  back  towards  the  occiput,  which  is  flat  and  shelving.     The 
two  halves  of  the  os  frontis  form  a  double  inclined  plane,  whose 
summit  coincides  with  the  sagittal  suture.     The  basis  cranii  is  full 
and  round,  and  the  mastoid  processes  large ;  nasal  bones  flat,  and 
falling  in  below  the  glabella;  orbits  large,  and  widely  separated; 
malar  bones  laterally  prominent.     This  latter  feature,  in  conjunction 
with  the  double  inclination  of  the  os  frontis,  gives  to  the  head  a 
pyramidal  form.     The  superior  maxilla  is  distinctly  everted  at  the 
alveolar  margin.      Another  head  of  the  same  tribe  is  longer  and 
narrower,  and,  in  consequence  of  the  flatness  of  the  malar  bones,  has 
less  of  the  pyramidal  form.  —  The  calvaria  of  a  Pessah  skull  (No. 
1095)  is  oblong  in  figure ;  the  forehead  flat,  and  receding ;  super- 
ciliary ridges  ponderous;  malar  bones  large  and  flat;  upper  jaw 
everted ;  lower  jaw  retracted,  occiput  protuberant.     In  a  Kroo  head 
(jSTo.  1098),  I  find  the  forehead  broad  and  high ;  the  calvaria  regu- 
larly arched,  and  having  its  greatest  diameter  between  the  anterior 
and  inferior  parts  of  the  parietalia ;  the  occipital  region  flat  and 
shelving  downwards  and  forwards  to  a  small  foramen  magnum; 
mastoid  processes  large ;   face  very  broad ;   malar  bones  shelving 
slightly  like  those  of  the  Eskimo ;  inter-orbital  space  very  large ; 
upper  jaw  slightly  everted  ;  teeth  rather  small,  and  vertical ;  zygo- 
matic fossse  deep.     In  another  Kroo  skull,  the  vertex  is  flat,  the 
forehead  recedent,  and  the  jaws  more  prognathous.     The  calvaria 
of  a  Dey  skull  is  narrow  in  front  and  broad  posteriorly,  with  a  flat 
vertex ;  face  small,  regular,  and  compact,  and,  were  it  not  for  the 
projection  of  the  superior  alveolus,  might  be  considered  as  almost 
European.     The  skull  of  an  Eboe  (E"o.  1102),  presents  characters 
similar  to  those  just  detailed.     It  does  not  coincide  with  the  physical 
descriptions  of  these  people  recorded  by  Oldfield  in  the  London 
Medical  and  Surgical  Journal  (October,  1835),  and  by  Edwards  in  his 
History  of  the  West  Indies,  but  is  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  great 
obliquity  of  the  orbital  opening,  and  the  unusual  smallness  of  the 
mastoid  processes. 

Between  JSTorth  and  South  Guinea,  the  Kamerun  Mountains 
appear  to  form  a  natural  ethnographic  line  of  division,  rising  as 
they  do  some  fourteen  thousand  feet  above  the  sea-level,  and  pre- 
senting upon  their  northern  aspect  the  Old  Kabardian  language, 
and  upon  their  southern,  the  Duali  —  two  dialects  which,  according 
to  Mr.  "Wilson,  are  as  different  from  each  other,  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  words  that  they  have  borrowed  by  frequent  inter-communi- 
cation, as  any  two  dialects  that  might  be  selected  from  the  remotest 
parts  of  the  country.  All  along  the  coast,  from  the  Kamerun  to  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  an  extraordinary  diversity  of  physical  type  pre- 


330  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

vails  among  the  inhabitants.  Thus,  in  the  Gabun  alone,  Wilsok 
distinguishes  at  least  five  very  marked  types.  "1.  There  is  the 
Jewish  type,  where  the  profile  is  strikingly  Jewish,  the  complexion 
either  a  pale  or  reddish  brown,  the  head  well-formed,  figure  slender, 
but  well-formed,  and  the  hair  nearly  as  woolly  as  that  of  the  pure 
Neoro.  2.  There  is  another,  tbat  may  be  regarded  as  the  Fulah 
type,  where  the  stature  is  of  middle  size,  complexion  a  dark  brown, 
the  face  oval,  and  features  regular,  the  hair  in  some  cases  crisp  or 
woolly,  and  in  others  soft  and  even  silky.  3.  The  Kaffir  type,  where 
the  frame  is  large  and  strong,  the  complexion  a  reddish-brown,  the 
lips  thick,  but  not  turned  out,  the  nose  somewhat  dilated,  but  not 
flat  like  the  Negro,  the  hands  and  feet  well-formed,  but  the  hair  is 
crisp  or  woolly.  4.  A  type  corresponding  to  the  description  given 
of  the  Kamerun  and  Corisco  men,  and  in  some  cases  showing  a 
decided  approximation  to  the  features  of  the  Somaulis,  represented 
in  Prichard's  work  on  the  physical  history  of  Man.  5.  What  may 
be  regarded  as  an  approximation  to  the  true  Negro  type,  the  most 
striking  instance  of  which  we  have  ever  seen,  is  that  of  a  man  by 
the  name  of  Toko,  whose  likeness  is  to  be  found  in  the  Day-Star, 
for  1847.  But  even  this  shows  a  much  better  formed  head,  and  a 
more  intelligent  countenance,  than  belongs  to  the  pure  Negro."255 

In  a  Benguella  skull  in  the  Collection  (No.  421),  the  forehead  is 
broad  and  capacious,  the  calvarial  arch  full  and  regular,  the  posterior 
region  appeal's  elongated  in  consequence  of  the  angle  formed  by  the 
junction  of  a  large  Wormian  piece  and  the  occiput  proper;  face  regu- 
lar, superior  maxillse  prognathous.  A  Mozambique  skull  (No.  423), 
resembles  in  form  that  of  the  Benguella  and  Kroos.  In  another 
Mozambique  head  (No.  1245),  however,  the  forehead  is  narrower 
and  higher.  A  cast  of  a  Mozambique  skull,  recently  added  to  the 
Collection,  presents  an  exceedingly  low  and  degraded  form.  Three 
Hottentot  heads  are  long,  compressed  anteriorly ;  foreheads  low ;  the 
whole  face  small  and  prognathous,  the  slope,  from  the  glabella  to 
the  upper  alveolus,  being  continuous ;  the  occipital  region  protube- 
rant. Only  one.  of  these  heads  approximates  the  pyramidal  form. 
Two  Kaffir  skulls  are  characterized  by  high,  peaked  foreheads ;  the 
sagittal  suture  marked  by  a  prominent  ridge,  and  the  calvaria  pyra- 
midal in  form.  Two  Hova  skulls  have  the  base  long  and  narrow, 
the  vertex  flat,  the  orbits  narrow  and  high,  and  the  superior  maxillaj 
prominent. 

The  reader  will  obtain  some  idea  of  the  different  cranial  forms  of 
Africa,  by  glancing  at  the  annexed  cuts  (Figs.  53,  54,  55,  56,  57,  58), 

255  Op.  oit,  p.  19. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


331 


taken  from  the  works  of  Morton,  Prichard,  and  Martin,  and 
representing  a  few  of  both  the  higher  and  lower  conformations 
of  the  skull. 


Fig.  53. 


Fig.  54. 


Kaffir. 


Ashantee. 


Fig.  55. 


Fig.  56. 


Bushman. 


Fig.  57. 


Creole  Negro. 


Mummied  Negress. 


Passing  from  Africa  to  America  by  the  way  of  the  Canary  Isles, 
we  encounter  a  peculiar  type  or  form  of  skull  —  that  of  the  ancient 
Guanches,  who  inhabited  these  Isles  before  they  fell  into  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Spaniards.  The  annexed  cut  (Fig.  59,  on  next  page,) 
shows  that  this  type  is  neither  African  nor  American,  but  appertains 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


GUANCHE. 


rather  to  the  "Caucasian"  family,  as  sug- 
gested by  Cuvier,  in  his  observations  upon 
the  Venus  Eottentotte.256  This  opinion  is  con- 
firmed by  a  Guanche  skull  in  the  Mortonian 
Collection. 

Through  Crania  Americana,  it  has  long 
been  known  to  the  scientific  world  that  a 
remarkable  sameness  of  osteological  cha- 
racter pervades  all  the  American  tribes 
from  Hudson's  Bay  to  Terra  del  Fuego.  It 
is  equally  well  known,  that  the  researches  of  Humboldt  and  Gallatin 
have  demonstrated  a  conformity  not  less  remarkable  in  the  language 
and  artistic  tendencies  of  these  numerous  and  widely-scattered  abo- 
rigines. Dr.  Morton  divides  the  American  race  into  two  great 
families  —  the  Toltecan,  possessing  a  very  ancient  demi-civilization, 
and  the  Barbarous  tribes.  The  latter,  he  sub-divides  into  the  Appa- 
lachian, Brazilian,  Patagonian,  and  Fuegian  branches.  The  Appa- 
lachians are  characterized  by  a  rounded  head ;  large,  salient,  and 
aquiline  nose ;  dark-brown  and  very  slightly  oblique  eyes ;  large 
and  straight  mouth,  with  nearly  vertical  teeth;  the  whole  face 
triangular.  The  physical  traits  of  the  .  Brazilian  group  differ  but 
little  from  those  of  the  Appalachian.  A  larger  and  more  expanded 
nose,  and  larger  mouths  and  lips,  seem  to  constitute  the  only  dif- 
ference. Tall  statures,  fine  forms,  and  indomitable  courage  distin- 
guish the  Patagonian  group.  The  Fuegians  bave  large  heads,  broad 
faces,  small  eyes,  clumsy  bodies,  large  chests,  and  ill-shaped  legs. 

As  the  cranial  type  or  standard  representative  of  these  American 
JBarbaroi,  I  have  selected  the  head  of  a  Cotonay,  or  Black-foot  chief, 

named  the  "Bloody  Hand"  (Fig.  60). 
It  is  from  the  upper  Missouri,  and 
was  presented  by  J.  J.  Audubon, 
Esq.  (jSTo.  1227  of  the  Collection). 
The  following  extract  from  the  Crania 
Americana  will  serve  to  give  the  rea- 
der a  general  idea  of  the  cranial  pecu- 
liarities of  the  American  type,  while 
a  comparison  with  the  subjoined  fig- 
ures will  show  how  extensively  this 
type  has  been  distributed  over  our 
continent. 

"  After  examining  a  great  number  of  skulls,  I  find  that  the  nations 
east  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  together  with  the  cognate  tribes, 


Fig.  60. 


COTONAY. 


266  Memoires  du  Museum  d'Histoire  naturelle,  t.  iii. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  333 

have  the  head  more  elongated  than  any  other  Americans.  This 
remark  applies  especially  to  the  great  Lenape  stock,  the  Iroquois, 
and  the  Cherokees.  To  the  west  of  the  Mississippi,  we  again  meet 
with  the  elongated  head  in  the  Mandans,  Ricaras,  Assinaboins,  and 
some  other  tribes.  Yet  even  in  these  instances,  the  characteristic 
truncation  of  the  occiput  is  more  or  less  obvious,  while  many  nations 
east  of  the  Eocky  Mountains  have  the  rounded  head  so  characteristic 
of  the  race,  as  the  Osages,  Ottoes,  Missouris,  Dacotas,  and  numerous 
others.  The  same  conformation  is  common  in  Florida ;  but  some 
of  these  nations  are  evidently  of  the  Toltecan  family,  as  both  their 
characters  and  traditions  testify.  The  head  of  the  Charibs,  as  well 
of  the  Antilles  as  of  Terra  Firma,  are  also  naturally  rounded ;  and 
we  trace  this  character,  so  far  as  we  have  had  opportunity  for  exami- 
nation, through  the  nations  east  of  the  Andes,  the  Patagonians  and 
the  tribes  of  Chili.  In  fact,  the  flatness  of  the  occipital  portion  of  the 
cranium  will  probably  be  found  to  characterize  a  greater  or  less 
number  of  individuals  in  every  existing  tribe,  from  Terra  del  Fuego 
to  the  Canadas.257  If  these  skulls  be  viewed  from  behind,  we  observe 
the  occipital  outline  to  be  moderately  curved  outwards,  wide  at  the 

257  It  is  pleasing  to  observe  the  unabated  energy  and  zeal  which  the  Professor  of  History 
and  English  Literature  in  University  College,  Toronto  (already,  as  we  have  seen,  celebrated 
for  his  archaeological  and  ethnological  researches  in  Scotland),  still  bestows  upon  his 
favorite  study,  in  his  new  Canadian  home.  In  a  recent  No.  of  the  Canadian  Journal  of 
Industry,  Science,  and  Art  (November,  1856),  of  which  he  is  the  editorial  head,  the  reader 
will  find,  from  his  pen,  an  interesting  account  of  the  Discovery  of  Indian  Remains  in  Canada 
West.  From  this  article  I  select  the  following  paragraph,  from  its  bearing  upon  the  sub- 
ject-matter presented  in  the  text  above:  "No  indications,"  says  Prof.  W.,  "have  yet  been 
noticed  of  a  race  in  Canada  corresponding  to  the  Braehy-cephalic  or  square-headed  mound- 
builders  of  the  Mississippi,  although  such  an  approximation  to  that  type  undoubtedly 
prevails  throughout  this  continent  as,  to  a  considerable  extent,  to  bear  out  the  conclusions 
of  Dr.  Morton,  that  a  conformity  of  organization  is  obvious  in  the  osteological  structure 
of  the  whole  American  population,  extending  from  the  southern  Fuegians,  to  the  Indians 
shirting  the  Arctic  Esquimaux.  But  such  an  approximation  —  and  it  is  unquestionably  no 
more  —  still  leaves  open  many  important  questions  relative  to  the  area  and  race  of  the 
ancient  mound-builders.  On  our  northern  shores  of  the  great  chain  of  lakes,  crania  of  the 
more  recent  braehy-cephalic  type  have  unquestionably  been  repeatedly  found  in  compara- 
tively modern  native  graves.  Such,  however,  are  the  exception,  and  not  the  rule.  The 
prevailing  type,  so  far  as  my  present  experience  extends,  presents  a  very  marked  predomi- 
nance of  the  longitudinal  over  the  parietal  and  vertical  diameter;  while,  even  in  the 
exceptional  cases,  the  braehy-cephalic  characteristics  fall  far  short  of  those  so  markedly 
distinguishing  the  ancient  crania,  the  distinctive  features  of  which  some  observers  have 
affirmed  them  to  exhibit.  In  point  of  archaeological  evidence  of  ancient  occupation,  more- 
over, our  northern  sepulchral  disclosures  have  hitherto  revealed  little  that  is  calculated  to 
add  to  our  definite  knowledge  of  the  past,  although  the  traces  of  ancient  metallurgic  arts 
suggest  the  probability  of  such  evidence  being  found.  The  discovery  of  distinct  proofs 
of  the  ancient  extension  of  the  race  of  the  mound-builders  into  these  northern  and  eastern 
regions,  would  furnish  an  addition  of  no  slight  importance  to  our  materials  for  the  primeval 
history  of  the  Great  Lake  districts  embracing  Canada  West." 


334  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

occipital  protuberances,  and  full  from  those  points  to  the  opening 
of  the  ear.  From  the  parietal  protuberances  there  is  a  slightly 
curved  slope  to  the  vertex,  producing  a  conical,  or  rather  a  wedge- 
shaped  outline.  Humboldt  has  remarked,  that  '  there  is  no  race  on 
the  globe  in  which  the  frontal  bone  is  so  much  pressed  backwards, 
and  in  which  the  forehead  is  so  small.'  ^  It  must  be  observed,  how- 
ever, that  the  lowness  of  the  forehead  is  in  some  measure  compen- 
sated by  its  breadth,  which  is  generally  considerable.  The  flat 
forehead  was  esteemed  beautiful  among  a  vast  number  of  tribes ; 
and  this  fancy  has  been  the  principal  incentive  to  the  moulding 
of  the  head  by  art.  Although  the  orbital  cavities  are  large,  the 
eyes  themselves  are  smaller  than  in  Europeans  ;  and  Fresier  asserts 
that  the  Puelche  women  he  saw  in  Chili  were  absolutely  hideous  from 
the  smallness  of  their  eyes.  The  latter  are  also  deeply  set  or  sunk 
in  the  head ;  an  appearance  which  is  much  increased  by  the  low  and 

prominent  frontal  ridges "What  has  been  said  of  the  bony 

orbits  obtains  with  surprising  uniformity ;  thus  the  superior  margin 
is  but  slightly  curved,  while  the  inferior  may  be  compared  to  an 
inverted  arch.  The  lateral  margins  form  curves  rather  mediate 
between  the  other  two.  This  fact  is  the  more  interesting  on  account 
of  the  contrast  it  presents  to  the  oblong  orbit  and  parallel  margins 
observable  in  the  Malay.  The  latter  conformation,  however,  is 
sometimes  seen  in  the  American,  but  chiefly  in  those  skulls  which 
have  been  altered  by  pressure  to  the  frontal  bone.  —  The  nose  con- 
stitutes one  of  the  strongest  and  most  uniform  features  of  the  Indian 
countenance ;  it  mostly  presents  the  decidedly  arched  form,  without 
being  strictly  aquiline,  and  still  more  rarely  flat.  -»-  The  nasal  cavities 
correspond  to  the  size  of  the  nose  itself;  and 
the  remarkable  acuteness  of  smell  possessed  by 
the  American  Indian  has  been  attributed  to  the 
great  expansion  of  the  olfactory  membrane. 
But  the  perfection  of  this  sense,  like  that  of 
hearing  among  the  same  people,  is  perhaps 
chiefly  to  be  attributed  to  its  constant  and  as- 
siduous cultivation.  The  cheek-bones  are  large 
and  prominent,  and  incline  rapidly  towards  the 
lower  jaw,  giving  the  face  an  angular  conforma- 
tion.    The  upper  jaw  is  often  elongated,  and 

Head  of  the  famous  Sao     much  inclined  outwards,  but  the  teeth  are  for 

chief,  "Black Hawk."         ,  .        __.      n  .     ,  , 

the  most  part  vertical.     The  lower  jaw  is  broad 

and  ponderous,  and  truncated  in  front.     The  teeth  are  also  very 

large,  and  seldom  decayed ;  for  among  the  many  that  remain  in  the 

skulls  in  my  possession,  very  few  present  any  marks  of  disease, 

2M  Monuments,  t.  I.,  p.  158. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN".  335 

although  they  are  often  much  worn  down  by  attrition  in  the  masti- 
cation of  hard  substances." 

The  Peruvian  skull  "  is  remarkable  for  its  small  size,  and  also, 
as  just  observed,  for  its  quadrangular  form.  The  occiput  is  greatly 
compressed,  sometimes  absolutely  vertical ;  the  sides  are  swelled 
out,  and  the  forehead  is  somewhat  elevated,  but  very  retreating. 
The  capacity  of  the  cavity  of  the  cranium,  derived  from  the  measure- 
ment of  many  specimens  of  the  pure  Inca  race,  shows  a  singularly 
small  cerebral  mass  for  an  intelligent  and  civilized  people.  These 
heads  are  remarkable  not  only  for  their  smallness,  but  also  for  their 
irregularity ;  for  in  the  whole  series  in  my  possession,  there  is  but 
one  that  can  be  called  symmetrical.  This  irregularity  chiefly  con- 
sists in  the  greater  projection  of  the  occiput  to  one  side  than  the 
other,  showing  in  some  instances  a  surprising  degree  of  deformity. 
As  this  condition  is  as  often  observed  on  one  side  as  the  other,  it  is 
not  to  be  attributed  to  the  intentional  application  of  mechanical 
force ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  to  a  certain  degree  common  to  the  whole 
American  race,  and  is  sometimes  no  doubt  increased  by  the  manner 
in  which  the  child  is  placed  in  the  cradle." 

From  the  preceding  paragraph,  it  will  be  seen  that  Dr.  Morton 
considered  the  asymmetry  of  the  Peruvian  head  to  be  congenital. 
In  a  subsequent  essay  he  concluded  that  this  deformity  was  the 
result  of  pressure  artificially  applied.259  According  to  Rivero  and 
Tschudi,  this  deformity  can  be  demonstrated  upon  the  mummied 
foetus.  It  must,  therefore,  be  regarded  as  the  natural  form  of  a 
primeval  race.  This  opinion  is  confirmed  by  the  following  extract 
from  a  letter  of  Dr.  Lund,  of  Copenhagen,  addressed  to  the  His- 
torical and  Geographical  Society  of  Brazil,  concerning  some  organic 
remains  discovered  in  the  calcareous  rocks  in  the  Province  of  Minas 
Geraes,  Brazil. 

"We  know,"  says  he,  "that  the  human  figures  found  sculptured  in  the  ancient  monu- 
ments of  Mexico  represent,  for  the  greater  part,  a  singular  conformation  of  head,  — being 
entirely  without  forehead  —  the  cranium  retreating  backwards  immediately  above  the  super- 
ciliary arch.  This  anomaly,  which  is  generally  attributed  to  an  artificial  disfiguration  of  the 
head,  or  the  taste  of  the  artist,  now  admits  a  more  natural  explanation ;  it  being  now  proved, 
by  these  authentic  documents,  that  there  really  existed  on  this  continent  a  race  exhibiting 
this  anomalous  conformation."260 

Many  curious  facts  might  be  mentioned  in  this  connection,  show- 
ing that  not  a  few  of  the  artificial  deformations  of  the  head  witnessed 
in  certain  races  of  men,  are  in  reality  imitations  of  once  natural  types. 

"We  know,"  says  Amedee  Thieert,  "that  the  Huns  used  artificial  means  for  giving 
Mongolian  physiognomy  to  their  children;    they  flattened  the  nose  with  firmly-strained 

259  Ethnography  and  Archaeology  of  the  American  Aborigines.  Silliman's  Journal, 
November,  1846. 

260  This  letter  was  translated  by  Lieut.  Strain,  U.  S.  N,  and  a  synopsis  of  it  published  in 
the  Proceedings  of  the  Philada.  Acad.  Nat.  Sciences,  February,  1844. 


oob  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

linen  ribbons,  and  pressed  the  head  to  make  the  cheek-bones  projecting.  What  could  be 
the  reasonable  cause  of  this  barbarous  custom,  if  not  the  effort  to  approach  a  form,  -which, 
among  the  Huns,  was  held  in  greater  regard  —  in  a  word,  the  aristocratic  race?  The  pur- 
pose quoted  by  the  Roman  authors,  to  get  the  helmet  better  fixed  on  the  head,  is  scarcely 
credible.  It  seems  more  probable,  that  when  the  Mongols  were  masters  of  the  Huns,  the 
Mongolian  physiognomy  was  the  prize  attached  to  aristocratic  distinctions;  they  conse- 
quently tried  to  approach  this  form,  and  considered  it  an  honor  thus  to  deform  themselves, 
in  order  to  resemble  the  reigning  nation.  This  is  most  likely  the  cause  of  those  unnatural 
deformations  which  historical  writers  so  particularly  describe."261 

This  opinion  is  also  entertained  by  Profs.  Hetzitjs262  and  Esch- 
richt.263  Zeune  thus  expresses  his  views  upon  this  interesting 
subject: 

"Though  some  naturalists  presume  that  the  flatness  of  the  Huanca  skull  and  the  height 
of  the  Natchez  skull  are  produced  by  artificial  pressure  when  young,  yet  Camper  contends 
against  this  idea,  on  page  37  of  his  'Natural  Difference  in  Faces,'  translated  by  Sommerino, 
as  does  also  Catlin  in  his  'North  American  Indians,'  and  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  if  there 
did  not  already  exist  a  disposition  to  these  forms  in  nature,  the  different  nations  could 
never  have  conceived  the  idea  of  carrying  it  to  extremes." 

The  following  extract  from  a  letter  addressed  to  Dr.  J.  H.  B.  McClel- 
lan,  by  Mr.  George  Gibbs,  Indian  Agent,  dated  Fort  Vancouver,  Ore- 
gon, December  17, 1855,  will  be  read  with  interest  in  this  connection : 

"  Let  me  point  out  to  you  one  thing  to  be  noted  as  regards  skulls  from  this  part  of  the 
country,  which  was  brought  to  my  notice  by  an  article  in  Schoolcraft's  book.  I  forget  by 
whom.  Among  ten  figures  given,  are  Chinook  skulls  unflattened.  Skulls  from  the  region 
where  that  practice  prevails,  which  are  in  the  natural  state,  are  those  of  slaves,  and  though 
possibly  born  among  the  Chinooks,  or  other  adjacent  tribes,  are  of  alien  races.  The  cha- 
racteristics must  not  be  assumed  therefore  from  these.  The  practice  prevails,  generally, 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  to  the  Dalles,  about  180  miles,  and  from  the  Straits  of 
Fuca  on  the  north  to  Coos  Bay,  between  the  42d  and  43d  parallel  south.  Northward  of  the 
Straits  it  diminishes  gradually  to  a  mere  slight  compression,  finally  confined  to  women,  and 
abandoned  entirely  north  of  Milbank  Sound.  So  east  of  the  Cascade  Mountains,  it  dies  out 
in  like  manner.  Slaves  are  usually  brought  from  the  south  —  I  should  rather  say  were,  for 
the  foreign  slave  trade  has  ceased,  though  not  the  domestic  (I  am  not  talking  of  home  poli- 
tics) —  and  the  Klamath  and  Shaste  tribes  of  California  probably  furnished  many  for  this 
country,  while  captives  from  here  were  taken  still  north,  and  from  Puget's  Sound  as  far  as 
the  Russian  possessions.  The  children  of  slaves  were  not  allowed  to  flatten  the  skull,  and 
therefore  these  round  heads  indicate,  not  the  liberty-loving  Puritan  of  the  west,  but  the 
serf.  I  mention  this,  because  in  minute  comparisons  it  is  proper  to  take  all  precautions  to 
insure  genuineness.  Skulls  taken  from  large  cemeteries,  or  from  sepulchres  of  whatever 
form  erected  with  care,  may  be  deemed  authentic,  saving  always  the  chance  of  intermar- 
riage with  distinct  tribes,  which  is  usual,  because  the  bodies  of  slaves  are  left  neglected  in 
the  woods ;  the  Chinooks,  for  instance,  preferring  to  buy  wives  from  the  Chihalis  or  Cowlitz, 
tribes  of  Sehlish  origin.     If  I  get  time  to  finish  my  general  report  this  winter,  you  will  find 

261  Quoted  by  Prof.  Retzius  from  Burckhardt's  German  translation  of  Thierry's  work, 
"Attila  Schilderungen  aus  der  Geschichte  des  fiinften  Jahrhunderts,  Leipzig,  1852."  See  a 
paper  "On  artificially  formed  Skulls  from  the  Ancient  World,"  by  Prof.  Retzius,  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  Philada.  Acad.  Nat.  Sciences,  for  September,  1855. 

262  Phrenologien  bedomd  fran  en  Anatomisk  standpunkt.     Af  Prof.  A  Retzius. 

263  Angaaende  Betydningen  af  Hjerneskallens  og  hele  Hovedets  Formforskjellighed. 
(Skand.  Naturf.  S'allsk.  Fordhandl.) 


OF    THE     RACES    OF    MEN. 


33/ 


further  details,  supposing  always  you  are  not  tired  of  these.  I  have  never  been  able  to  get 
an  authenticated  skull  of  a  -white  half-breed.  These  also  are  never  flattened,  the  pride 
of  intercourse  in  the  mother  preserving  to  the  child  the  attributes  of  the  superior  race."  2Si 

Figs.  62,  63,  64,  and  65,  following,  represent,  respectively,  the 
head  of  a  Creek  chief,  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  ISTott,  of  Mobile ;  the 
skull  of  a  Sioux  or  Dacota  warrior  (No.  605) ;  the  skull  of  a  Seminole 


Fig.  62. 


Fig.  63. 


Seminole  Waekiok. 
Fig.  66. 


Dacota  Warrior. 


Fig.  65. 


Ancient  Mound-builder. 
Fig.  67. 


Peruvians. 


S6*  See  Proceedings  of  Philada.  Acad.  Nat.  Sciences,  March,  1856. 

22 


338  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

warrior,  slain  at  the  battle  of  St.  Josephs,  in  June,  1836  (No.  604) ; 
and  the  cranium  of  an  ancient  mound-builder  (ISTo.  1512),  "  found  by 
Dr.  Davis  and  Mr.  Squier,  in  a  mound  in  the  Scioto  Valley,  Ohio, 
and  described  and  figured  by  them  in  their  Ancient  Monuments  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  PI.  XL VII.  and  XL VIII. 

The  general  form  of  the  Peruvian  skull  is  shown  in  Figs.  66 
and  67  (retro). 

The  cranial  types  of  Oceanica  still  remain  to  be  discussed.  With 
my  limits  already  overswelled,  I  can  but  allude  in  the  briefest  man- 
ner to  a  few  of  the  more  important  and  striking  skull-forms  of  this 
vast  region,  which  has  been  anthropologically  divided  by  Jacqui- 
jfOT26o  jn^0  three  great  sections,  viz. :  1.  Australia,  comprehending 
New  Holland  and  Tasmania,  or  Van  Diemen's  Land ;  2.  Polynesia, 
embracing  Micronesia  and  Melanesia,  or,  in  other  words,  the  islands 
of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  from  the  west  coast  of  America  to  the  Philip- 
pines and  the  Moluccas ;  and  3.  Malaysia,  comprising  the  Sunda, 
Philippine,  and  Molucca  islands  —  the  East  Indies,  or  Indian  Archi- 
pelago of  the  geographer. 

According  to  Prichard,  the  numerous  types  of  this  immense 
region  differ  decidedly  from  each  other,  and  also  from  those  of  the 
old  and  new  world.  Jacquinot,  however,  affirms  that  the  Polyne- 
sians do  not  differ  sensibly  from  the  American  tribes.2116  Blanchard 
also  speaks  of"  une  grand  analogie  entre  les  peuples  de  la  Polynesie 
et  ceux  de  l'Amerique."267  The  correctness  of  this  opinion  Dr.  Nott 
positively  denies,  resting  his  negation  upon  a  comparison  of  the  skulls 
of  the  two  races.268  Blumenbach,  Desmoulins,  and  Pickering  assure 
us  that  the  Polynesians  belong  to  the  Malay  stock.  Such  an  affilia- 
tion Crawfurd  clearly  disproves. 

Jacquinot  thus  characterizes  the  Polynesian  race  :  "  Skin  tawny, 
of  a  yellow  color  washed  with  bistre,  more  or  less  deep ;  very  light 
in  some,  almost  brown  in  others.  Hair  black,  bushy,  smooth,  and 
sometimes  frizzled.  Eyes  black,  more  split  than  open,  not  at  all 
oblique.  Nose  long,  straight,  sometimes  aquiline  or  straight;  nos- 
trils large  and  open,  which  makes  it  sometimes  look  flat,  especially 
in  women  and  children ;  in  them,  also,  the  lips,  which  in  general 
are  long  and  curved,  are  slightly  prominent.     Teeth  fine,  incisors 

283  Voyage  au  Pole  Sud,  Zoologie,  t.  2.  Observations  sur  les  Races  Huinaines  de  PAinenque 
Meridionale  et  de  l'Oc^anie. 

a*  Op.  cit. 

w  Voyage  au  Pole  Sud,  Anthropologic  ;  Texte,  p.  68.  In  the  same  paragraph,  however, 
he  says,  "Nous  pensons  qu'il  existe  entre  eux  des  caracteres  distinctifs,  des  caracteres 
appr^ciables  dans  la  forme  du  crane." 

268  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  438. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN. 


339 


Fig.  68. 


large.     Cheek-bones  large,  not  salient ;  enlarging  tlie  face,  which, 
nevertheless,  is  longer  than  wide." 

This  description  is  confirmed  by  most  of  the  travellers  who  have 
visited  the  region  tinder  consideration.  "  All  voyagers,  however," 
says  Morton,  "  have  noticed  the  great  disparity  that  exists  between 
the  plebeians  and  the  aristocratic  class,  as  respects  stature,  features, 
and  complexion.  The  privileged  order  is  much  fairer  and  much 
taller  than  the  other ;  their  heads  are  better  developed,  and  their 
profile  shows  more  regular  features,  including  the  arched  and  aquiline 
nose."269 

A  slight  examination  of  the  skulls  in  the  Mortonian  Collection 
representing  this  race,  is  sufficient  to  show,  that  while  a  general 
resemblance  of  cranial  forms  prevails  throughout  this  region,  yet 
considerable  variations  in  type  can  be  readily  pointed  out.  A 
glance  at  the  beautiful  plates  of  Dumoutier's  "  Atlas"  serves  to 
confirm  this  conclusion. 

The  head  of  a  Kanaka,  of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  —  a  race  of  people 
"  the  most  docile  and  imitative,  and 
perhaps  also  the  most  easy  of  in- 
struction, of  all  the  Polynesians" — 
appears  to  me  to  afford  a  good  idea 
of  the  general  cranial  type  of  Poly- 
nesia. The  head  (Fig.  68)  is  elon- 
gated; the  forehead  recedent;  the 
face  long  and  oval;  the  breadth 
between  the  orbits  considerable; 
the  alveolar  margin  of  the  supe- 
rior maxillary  slightly  prominent; 
the  lower  jaw  large  and  regularly 
rounded.  The  breadth  and  shortness  of  the  base  and  the  peculiar 
flatness  of  the  sub-occipital  region  give  to  the  whole  head  an  elon- 
gated or  drawn-out  appearance. 

This  peculiarity  of  the  basi-occipital  portion  of  the  head  is  still 
better  shown  in  Figs.  69  and  70,  on  next  page,  which  represent  the 
cranium  of  a  Sandwich  Islander,  who  died  in  the  Marine  Hospital  at 
Mobile,  while  under  the  care  of  Drs.  Levert  and  Mastin.  "  This 
skull,"  says  Dr.  Nott,  "was  presented  to  Agassiz  and  myself  for 
examination,  without  being  apprised  of  its  history.  Notwithstand- 
ing there  was  something  in  its  form  which  appeared  unnatural,  yet 
it  resembled,  more  than  any  other  race,  the  Polynesian;  and  as  such 
we  did  not  hesitate  to  class  it.  It  turned  out  afterwards  that  we 
were  right ;  and  that  our  embarrassment  had  been  produced  by  an 


Sandwich  Islander. 


208  Crania  Americana,  p.  59. 


340  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

Fig.  69.  Fig.  70. 


Sandwich  Islander. 


Vertical  View  of  Same. 


artificial  flattening  of  the  occiput;  which  process  the  Islander, 
while  at  the  hospital,  had  told  Drs.  Levert  and  Mastin,  was 
habitual  in  his  family.  The  profile  view  betrays  less  protube- 
rance of  brain  behind,  and  the  vertical  view  more  compression 
of  occiput,  than  belongs  generally  to  his  race ;  but  still  there 
remains  enough  of  cranial  characteristics  to  mark  his  Polynesian 
origin ;  even  were  not  the  man's  history  preserved,  to  attest  the 
gross  depravity  of  his  animal  propensities." 

Fj    71  Fig.  71,  reduced  from  Plate  32  of  Du- 

moutier's  Atlas,  represents  the  head  of  a 
native  of  Mawi,  one  of  the  small  islands 
of  the  Sandwich  group.  This  head  appears 
to  me  to  possess  a  somewhat  higher  de- 
velopment than  is  seen  in  the  two  pre- 
ceding figures. 

The  skull  of  a  cannibal,  in  the  Mortonian 
Collection  (No.  1531),  from  Christina  Island 
—  one  of  the  Marquesas  —  exhibits  a  nar- 
row, dolicho-cephalic  form;  the  frontal  re- 
gion flat  and  narrow ;  tbe  posterior  region  broad  and  ponderous ; 
the  face  massive  and  roughly  marked ;  the  superior  maxilla  more 
everted  than  in  the  Sandwich  Islander ;  altogether  a  low  and  brutal 

form,  though  the  internal  capacity  is  as 
high  as  90.5  cubic  inches.  This  head  re- 
sembles in  several  respects  the  skull  of  a 
man  of  the  Tais  tribe  (ISTukahiva),  figured 
by  Dumoutier  on  his  29th  Plate.  It  differs 
from  the  latter  in  having  a  somewhat  re- 
tracted lower  jaw ;  a  feature  which  approxi- 
mates it  to  the  Malay  head  figured  below. 
Fig.  72  repi'esents  one  of  a  collection  o'f 
Nukahivan.  crania    brought    by  Dumoutier   from   the 


Sandwich  Islander. 


Fig.  72. 


OF     THE     EACES     OF     MEN.  341 

ancient  ossuaries  in  the  Island  of  ISTukahiva.  Blanchakd  has  care- 
fully studied  this  collection,  and  also  a  series  of  Marquesau  crania 
in  the  "  Galerie  Anthropologique  du  Museum  d'Histoire  JSaturelle." 
He  informs  us  that — 

"  Comparativement  aux  cranes  des  Europeens,  ceux  des  naturels  des  lies  Marquises  se 
montrent  beaucoup  plus  retrecis  et  plus  arrondis  vers  le  sommet.  Le  frontal  fait  non- 
seulement  en  arriere,  mais  aussi  sur  les  cote's.  Cet  os  est  ainsi  arrondi  et  n'offre  en  aucune 
facon  ce  m^plat  general  qu'on  observe  ordinairement  dans  les  tetes  des  Europeens,  avec  des 
nuances  a,  la  verite  tres-notables. 

"En  mesurant  la  hauteur  du  crane  des  Noukahiviens  du  bord  inferieur  du  maxillaire 
supe"rieur  a  Tangle  de  la  derniere  molaire  ou  depuis  l'apophyse  mastoi'dienne  jusqu'au  bord 
median  du  coronal  a  son  insertion  avec  les  parietaux.  et  comparant  cette  mesure  avec  celle 
de  l'epaisseur  du  crane  prise  de  la  partie  la  plus  avancee  du  frontal  a  l'origine  de  l'occi- 
pital,  nous  avons  trouve  chez  plusieurs  sujets  que  cette  hauteur  etait  a  peine  inferieure 
a  l'epaisseur.  Chez  un  pins  grand  nombre  cependant,  nous  avons  trouve  la  largeur  du 
crane,  consider  par  le  cote,  d'environ  un  huitieme  superieure  a  la  hauteur,  et  m§me  un 
peu  plus,  chez  deux  ou  trois  individus.  De  ce  cote"  il  y  a  done  des  differences  individuelle's 
assez  prononc^es. 

"  Le  coronal  dans  sa  plus  grande  largeur,  prise  d'une  suture  a  l'autre,  s'est  montre  d'une 
etendue  sensiblement  moindre  avec  de  trfes-iegeres  variations,  que  la  hauteur  prise  de  l'ori- 
gine des  os  nasaux  a,  la  suture  mediane  des  parietaux.  Un  crane  de  femme  seul  nous  a 
fourni  ces  deux  mesures  £gales. 

"  La  distance  de  l'apophyse  mastoi'dienne  ^  l'extre'mite'  de  la  machoire  superieure  s'est 
trouve"e,  chez  tous  les  cranes  de  Kanaques,  egale  a  l'espace  compris  entre  le  bord  externa 
des  deux  os  jugaux  pris  a  leur  insertion  avec  l'os  frontal. 

"  Dans  ce  type  enfin  on  constate  encore  une  preeminence  bien  prononcfe  des  apophyses 
zygomatiques  une  forte  saillie  des  os  maxillaires  et  une  forme  ovalaire  dans  la  base  du 
crane,  l'occipital  etant  sensiblement  att^nue  en  arriere. 

"  Les  tetes  de  femmes  pr&entent  les  memes  caracteres  que  les  tetes  d'hommes,  les 
memes  rapports  entre  les  proportions  de  la  boite  cranienne,  de  l'os  frontal,  etc.,  avec  les  os 
de  la  face  un  peu  moins  saillants." 

In  Fig.  73  (skull  of  a  Taitian  woman),  Fig.  73. 

the  reader  has  before  him  the  cranial  type 
of  the  Society  Islands. 

"Nous  remarquons,"  says'  Blanchakd,  "la  menie 
forme  ge'ne'rale  de  la  tete  que  chez  les  naturels  des 
iles  Marquises ;  e'est  e"galement  une  forme  pyramidale, 
plus  prononce'e  encore  que  nous  ne  l'avons  vu  partout 
ailleurs  dans  la  t6te  d'homme  qui  porte  sur  la  planche 
les  nuine"ros  1  et  2 ;  mais  ici  l'allongement  general  de 
cette  tete  nous  fait  croire  a,  une  particularity  tout  a  fait 
individuelle.      Memes  rapports   entre  la  hauteur  et  la  Taitian. 

longueur  du  crane  que  chez  les  Kanaques,  et  cependant, 

vue  par  le  profil,  la  tete  nous  parait  plus  arrondie  chez  les  Tai'tiens,  les  parie'taux  nous 
semblent  moins  de'prime's  en  arriere.  Sous  le  rapport  des  proportions  de  l'os  frontal, 
comme  chez  les  precedents,  nous  avons  constate  un  peu  moins  de  largeur  que  de  hauteur. 
La  saillie  des  os  maxillaires  nous  parait  aussi  plus  prononcee  chez  le  Taitien  que  chez  le 
Noukahivien.  Ceci  est  tres-marque  dans  la  tete  de  femme  portant  sur  la  planche  XXX  les 
numeros  3  et  4.  Si  l'on  mesure  la  longueur  comprise  enti'e  l'apophyse  mastoi'dienne  et 
l'extremite  du  maxillaire  supfirieur,  on  verra,  en  portant  cette  mesure  sur  l'espace  compris 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


Fig.  74. 


Tonga  Islander. 


entre  les  os  jugaux  &  leur  insertion,  qu'elle  est  manifestement  superieure  a  celle  que  nous 
avoDS  reconnue  sur  de  nombreux  cranes  de  naturels  des  lies  Marquises.  Cette  difference 
est  aussi  tres-sensible  dans  le  crane  d'enfant  qui,  sur  la  memo  planche,  porte  les  numeros 
5  et  6." 

Dumoutier  figures,  in  his  beautiful  Atlas,  several  crania  from 
Tongataboo  and  Vavao,  of  which  I  select  one  (Fig.  74),  that  of 
a  Tonga  Islander,  to  represent  the  skull- 
type  of  the  Friendly  Islands.  According 
to  Blanchard,  these  crania  resemble,  in 
their  general  form  or  type,  those  of  the 
Mangareviens,  Taitians,  and  other  Polyne- 
sians. He  assures  us  that  the  proportions 
of  the  calvaria,  the  prominence  of  the  zygo- 
matic arches,  and  the  maxillary  bones,  ap- 
pear to  be  the  same  in  all.  Viewed  in  front, 
the  head  of  the  Tongans  partakes  of  the 
pyramidal  form  more  decidedly  than  the 
skulls  of  the  other  Polynesians.  The  coro- 
nal region  is  also  a  little  longer. 

"Si  le  caractere,"  says  Rlanchard,  "observe'  ici  sur  quelques  individus  appartient  a  la 
plus  grande  masse  des  habitants  de  l'archipel  des  Amis,  il  deviendra  Evident  qu'il  existe 
un  caractere  anthropologique  pour  distinguer  les  Tongans  de  leurs  Toisins  de  Test,  et  que 
ce  caractere  traduit  une  superiority  relative  d'intelligence." 

A  higher  form  of  the  skull  than  the  Tongan,  is  seen  in  Fig.  75, 

which  represents  the  head  of  a  Feejee 
Islander,  in  the  Collection  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons,  London.  It  is 
thus  described  by  Martin  : 

"  The  forehead  is  small,  and  laterally  compressed, 
the  space  occupied  by  the  temporal  muscle  being 
quite  flat ;  but  the  centre  of  each  parietal  bone  is 
boldly  and  abruptly  convex ;  the  top  of  the  head, 
or  coronal  arch,  is  ridge-like,  with  a  slope  down- 
ward on  each  side ;  the  cheek-bones  are  large  and 
deep ;  the  upper  margin  of  the  orbits  is  smooth  ; 
and  the  frontal  sinuses  are  but  slightly  indicated ; 
the  orbits  are  large,  and  rather  circular ;  the  nasal 
bones  are  short  and  depressed,  and  the  nasal  ori- 
fice is  of  remarkable  width  and  extent,  as  is  that 
of  the  posterior  nares  also;  the  alveolar  ridge  of  the  superior  maxillary  bone  projects 
moderately ;  the  lower  jaw  is  very  thick  and  deep ;  the  posterior  angle  is  rounded,  and  the 
base  of  the  ramus  arched,  so  that  the  posterior  angle  and  the  chin  do  not  touch  a  plane ; 
the  basilar  process  of  the  occipital  bone  is  less  inclined  upward  than  in  five  or  six  European 
skulls  examined  at  the  same  time :  the  coronal  suture  only  impinges  on  the  sphenoid  bone 
by  a  quarter  of  an  inch.  From  the  middle  of  the  occipital  condyle  to  the  alveolar  ridge 
between  the  two  middle  incisors,  the  measurement  is  four  inches  and  three-eighths ;  the 
posterior  development  of  the  cranium,  beyond  the  middle  of  the  condyle,  three  inches  and 
three-eighths." 


Fig.  75. 


Feejee  Islander. 


OF    THE    RACES    OF    MEN. 


34J 


Malicolo. 


Fig.  76  represents  the  head  of  a  native  of  Mali-  Fis-  76- 

oolo,  one  of  the  ISTew  Hebrides. 

As  we  journey  westward  toward  Australia,  we 
find  the  human  cranial  type  changing  again  in 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Vitian  Archipelago.  A 
glance  at  the  figures  on  plate  33  of  Dumotjtier's 
Atlas,  shows  at  once  that  the  Vitian  skulls  differ 
to  some  extent  from  those  of  the  other  Polynesian 
races  already  noticed.  The  cranium  of  the  former 
is  more  elongated  posteriorly,  and  the  maxillary 
bones  are  more  salient ;  the  forehead  is  lower  and 
more  recedent,  so  that,  viewed  in  front,  the  head  has  less  of  the  pyra- 
midal form.  Blanchard  has  pointed  out  considerable  differences  in 
the  dimensions  of  the  Vitian,  as  compared  with  the  other  Polynesian 
skulls.  He  also  compares  together  African  and  Polynesian  crania, 
and  observes  that  if  these  two  great  groups  resemble  each  other  in 
certain  characters,  they  differ  not  the  less  remarkably  in  others. 

It  is  obviously  impossible  for  me,  in  this  place,  to  give  an  elaborate 
description  of  the  various  skull-forms  of  the  Polynesian  realm.  Such 
a  description,  in  the  hands  of  Blanchard,  has  already  grown  into  an 
octavo  volume  of  nearly  three  hundred  pages.  Let  it  suffice,  there- 
fore, to  say,  that  the  traveller,  as  he  visits  in  succession  the  numerous 
groups  of  islands  composing  the  Polynesian  realm,  is  constantly  con- 
fronted with  interesting  and  instructive  modifications  of  the  funda- 
mental type  of  this  realm. 

The  Malay  conformation  next  claims  our  attention.     From  the 
heads  of  this  race  in  the  Mortonian 
Collection,  I  select  ~No.  47,  as  the 
representative  of  this  widely-diffused 
and  peculiar  type. 

"The  skull  of  the  Malay"  (Fig.  77),  says 
Mobton,  "presents  the  following  characters: 
the  forehead  is  low,  moderately  prominent,  and 
arched ;  the  occiput  is  much  compressed,  and 
often  projecting  at  its  upper  and  lateral  parts; 
the  orbits  are  oblique,  oblong,  and  remarkably 
quadrangular,  the  upper  and  lower  margins 
being  almost  straight  and  parallel ;  the  nasal 
bones  are  broad  and  flattened,  or  even  concave ; 

the  cheek-bones  are  high  and  expanded ;  the  jaws  are  greatly  projected ;  and  the  upper  jaw, 
together  with  the  teeth,  is  much  inclined  outwards,  and  often  nearly  horizontal.  The  teeth 
are  by  nature  remarkably  fine,  but  are  almost  uniformly  filed  away  in  front,  to  enable  them 
to  imbibe  the  color  of  the  betel-nut,  which  renders  them  black  and  unsightly.  —  The  facial 
angle  is  less  than  in  the  Mongol  and  Chinese ;  for  the  average,  derived  from  a  measurement 
of  thirteen  perfect  skulls  in  my  possession,  gives  about  seventy-three  degrees."  2,° 


Fig.  77. 


Malay. 


2,0  Crania  Americana,  p.  56. 


344 


THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 


The  exceedingly  low  and  degraded  Australian  type  is  shown  in 
the  following  engravings.  Fig.  78  (No.  1327  of  the  Collection)  repre- 
sents the  skull  of  a  native  of  Port  St.  Philip,  New  South  Wales. 
"This  skull,"  says  Moeton,  "is  the  nearest  approach  to  the  orang 
type  that  I  have  seen."  It  is  a  truly  animal  head.  The  forehead  is 
exceedingly  flat  and  recedent,  while  the  prognathism  of  the  superior 
maxillary  almost  degenerates  into  a  muzzle.     The  alveolar  arch, 


Fig.  78. 


Fig.  79. 


Australian  of  Poet  St.  Philip. 


Australian. 


Fig.  80. 


Fig.  81. 


New  Hollander. 


Native  of  Timor. 


instead  of  being  round  or  oval  in  outline,  is  nearly  square.  The  whole 
head  is  elongated  and  depressed  along  the  coronal  region,  the  basis 
cranii  flat,  and  the  mastoid  processes  very  large  and  roughly  formed. 
The  immense  orbits  are  overhung  by  ponderous  superciliary  ridges. 
This  latter  feature  is  still  more  evident  in  No.  1451  of  the  Collection, 
which,  though  varying  somewhat  in  type,  presents  in  general  the  same 
brutal  appearance.    Fig.79,  from  Pbichaed's  "Researches,"  represents 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  345 

the  skull  of  an  Australian  savage,  which  is  in  the  museum  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Surgeons.  It  somewhat  resemhles  Fig.  54  in  its  general  form. 
The  longitudinal  ridge  running  from  the  forehead  to  the  occiput,  which 
is  frequently  ohserved  in  Australian  skulls,  is  conspicuous  in  this. 
The  ridge  formed  by  the  frontal  sinuses  is  likewise  prominent,  and 
there  is  a  deep  notch  over  the  nasal  processes  of  the  frontal  bone. 
These  characters  are  very  strongly  marked  in  the  skulls  of  the 
Oceanic  nations,  as  in  those  of  the  New  Zealanders  and  Taitians.271 
Figs.  80  and  81  —  from  Dumoutier's  "Atlas" — represent  respectively 
a  native  of  Bate  Raffle,  on  the  coast  of  New  Holland,  and  a  native  of 
Amnoubang,  in  the  Isle  of  Timor. 

According  to  Capt.  Wilees,  the  "  cast  of  the  (Australian)  face  is 
between  the  African  and  the  Malay ;  the  forehead  unusually  nar- 
row and  high ;  the  eyes  small,  black,  and  deep-set ;  the  nose  much 
depressed  at  the  upper  part,  between  the  eyes,  and  widened  at  the 
base,  which  is  done  in  infancy  by  the  mother,  the  natural  shape 
being  of  an  aquiline  form ;  the  cheek-bones  are  high,  the  mouth 
large,  and  furnished  with  strong,  well-set  teeth ;  the  chin  frequently 
retreats  ;  the  neck  is  thin  and  short." 

"  The  general  characters  of  the  Australian  skull,"  writes  Martin, 
"consist  in  their  narrowness,  or  lateral  compression,  and  in  the 
ridge-like  form  of  the  coronal  arch ;  the  sides  of  which,  however, 
are  less  roof-like,  or  flattened,  than  those  of  the  Tasmanian  skull.  .  .  . 
The  superciliary  ridge  projects  greatly,  giving  a  scowling  expression 
to  the  orbits,  and  reminding  us  of  some  of  the  larger  Apes ;  the  nasal 
bones,  which  are  exceedingly  short  and  depressed,  sink  abruptly, 
forming  a  notch  at  their  union  with  the  frontal  bone,  which  projects 
over  them;  the  forehead  is  low  and  retreating;  and  the  external 
orbitary  process  of  the  temporal  bone  is  very  bold  and  projecting, 
while  the  space  occupied  by  the  temporal  muscle  is  strongly  marked  ; 
the  orbits  are  irregularly  quadrate  ;  the  cheek-bones  are  prominent ; 
the  face  is  flat,  and  seems  as  if  crushed  below  the  frontal  bone ;  the 
external  nasal  orifice,  and  that  of  the  posterior  nares,  are  very  ample ; 
the  coronal  suture  terminates  as  in  the  skull  of  the  Feejee  Islander; 
the  lower  jaw  is  more  acute  at  its  angle  than  in  the  skull  just  alluded 
to,  but  it  is  arched  upward  at  the  chin."272 

In  conclusion,  I  place  before  the  reader  six  figures,  representing 
Tasmanian,  New-Guinean,  and  Alforian  skulls.  They  are  takeu 
from  the  works  of  Du  Perry,  Prichard,  Martin,  and  Dumoutier, 
and  are  introduced  here,  not  only  to  complete  our  survey  of  cranial 

2»  Op.  cit.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  299.  »2  Man  and  Monkeys,  p.  312. 


346 


THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 


forms,  but  also  to  exhibit  a  few  of  those  inferior  types  through  which 
the  human  family,  in  obedience  to  a  grand  and  deeply  underlying 
law  of  organic  unity,  seeks  to  connect  itself  with  the  great  animal 
series  of  which  it  is  the  undoubted  head  and  front. 


Fig.  82. 


Fig.  83. 


Tasmanian,  from  Western  Coast  of 
Van  Diemen's  Land.  (Royal  Col- 
lege of  Surgeons,  London.) 


Fig.  84. 


Tasmanian  (Dumoutier's  Atlas). 


Fig.  85. 


Tasmanian  (Prichard's  Researches). 


Tasmanian  (Dumoutier's  Atlas). 


Fig.  87. 


Fig.  86. 


New  Guinean  (Dumoutier's  Atlas). 


Alfourou-Endamene  (Martin's 
Man  and  Monkeys). 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN".  347 

Here  our  rapid  panoramic  survey  of  the  diversified  cranial  charac- 
teristics of  the  human  family  must  terminate.     In  this  survey,  having 
no  theory  to  establish  or  defend,  I  have  carefully  and  impartially  pre- 
sented the  facts  as  I  have  found  them,  for  the  most  part,  indelibly 
traced  upon  the  specimens  in  the  vast  Mortonian  Collection.     Nor 
have  I  depended  upon  this  Collection  alone,  as  will  appear  from  the 
frequent  references  to  and  quotations  from  the  more  important  of  the 
numerous  works  which  constitute  the  literature  of  my  subject.     This 
method  has  been  adopted,  as  affording  the  best  idea  of  the  past  his- 
tory, progress,  and  present  condition  of  craniographic  research,  and 
its  claims  to  be  considered  as  one  of  the  natural  sciences.     By  such 
a  procedure,  moreover,  the  reader  has  gradually  become  acquainted, 
as  it  were,  with  the  zealous  and  indefatigable  workers  in  this  field, 
whose  names  are  intimately  associated  with  many  of  the  facts  dis- 
cussed in  this  essay.     Feelings  of  professional  pride  prompt  me, 
in  this  place,  to  refer  particularly  to  two  of  these  laborers,  who,  with 
careful  hands,  have  materially  assisted  in  building  an  Ethnologic 
edifice,  whose  fair  proportions  will  yet  delight  and  astonish  the 
world.     The  researches  of  Pkichaed  and  Mokton  constitute  right 
noble   columns   guarding  the   entrance   into   this   edifice.     Recog- 
nizing, at  an  early  period  of  their  professional  career,  the  scientific 
claims  of  medicine  —  claims  seldom  perceived  by  the  mass  —  their 
expansive  minds  led  them  steadily  onward,  beyond  the  crowded 
middle-walks  of  their  calling.     Both  were  physicians,  in  the  primi- 
tive sense  of  the  word — medical  naturalists,  whose  broad  and  com- 
prehensive views  shed  a  lustre  over  the  healing  art.     There  is  a 
singular  propriety  in  thus  coupling  the  labors  and  lives  of  these 
two  philosophers.      Their  patient,  unresting  industry  and   strong 
determinative  will  enabled  them  to  prove  conclusively  to  the  world, 
as  indeed  Hunter  and  others  had  already  done,  that,  to  a  consider- 
able extent,  scientific  investigation  is  not  only  compatible  with  the 
active  daily  duties  of  the  physician,  but  in  reality,  by  inculcating 
close   and   accurate   habits   of  observation,  very   often  becomes  a 
guarantee  of  success  in  the  performance  of  those  duties.     As  con- 
firmatory of  this,  hear  what  their  respective  biographers  have  said 
of  them:  "Dr.  Prichard  applied  himself,"  says  Dr.  Hodgkin,  "with 
as  much  zeal  to  the  practice,  as  he  had  done  to  the  study  of  his 
profession.      He  established  a  dispensary.      He  became  physician 
to  some  of  the  principal  medical  institutions  of  Bristol.     Me  had  not 
only  a  large  practice  in  his  oivn  neighborhood,  hut  was  often  called  to 
distant   consultations.      Notwithstanding   the    engrossing   nature  of 
these  occupations,  he  found  time  to  prepare  and  deliver  lectures 


348  THE     CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS 

on  Physiology  and  Medicine,  and  wrote  an  essay  on  Fever,  and  one 
on  Epilepsy,  and  subsequently  a  larger  work  on  Nervous  Diseases."273 
All  this,  it  will  be  recollected,  in  addition  to  his  laborious  Researches 
into  the  Physical  History  of  Mankind,  upon  which  is  based  his  fame 
as  an  Ethnologist.  Of  Dr.  Morton,  Prof.  Chas.  D.  Meigs  thus  writes: 
"  His  medical  practice  was  increasing  up  to  the  time  of  his  death.  He 
had  the  good  sense  and  prudence  to  maintain  his  active  and  visible 
connection  with  his  profession,  while  striving  in  the  race  for  fame  as 
a  philosopher.  He  had  early  begun  to  make  his  now  celebrated 
collection  of  crania,  with  great  labor  and  toil,  and  inconvenient  cost. 
He  investigated  organic  remains :  he  explained  problems  in  zoologj* 
and  ethnology ;  he  diligently  attended  the  sick  ;  he  published  valuable 
treatises  on  consumption,  on  the  science  of  anatomy,  and  on  the 
practice  of  physic.  He  served  the  city  gratuitously,  as  physician  to 
the  Almshouse  Hospital,  and  delivered  courses  of  lectures  at  the 
Pennsylvania  Medical  College,  where  he  was  Professor  of  Anatomy. 
All  these  things  were  done  by  a  man  whose  family  was  large,  and 
chargeable  upon  his  funds,  derivable  in  chief  from  his  exertions  as 
a  physician."27*  Such  were  the  manifold  and  onerous  duties  amidst 
which  Dr.  Morton  composed  and  published  his  two  brilliant  cranio- 
logical  works,  and  numerous  detached  papers  on  ethnography,  hy- 
bridity,  and  allied  subjects. 

Though  the  lives  of  these  two  men  present  several  interesting 
parallels,  and  though  their  labors  were  steadily  directed  towards 
the  same  great  object,  yet  they  sought  that  object  through  different 
channels  of  research.  With  laborious  hands,  Prichard  gathered 
from  the  records  of  travel,  and  from  numerous  philological  and 
archaeological  works  in  various  languages,  an  immense  mass  of 
material,  which  he  carefully  and  learnedly  digested.  With  equal 
industry  and  perseverance,  Morton  gathered  from  the  receptacles 
of  the  dead,  all  over  the  world,  those  bony  records  which  he  studied 
with  such  untiring  zeal  and  discrimination.  Prichard,  the  erudite 
scholar,  gave  to  the  natural  history  of  man  a  philosophico-literary  cha- 
racter; Morton,  the  philosophical  naturalist,  stamped  it  with  the  seal 
of  the  natural  sciences.  To  the  ethnological  student,  the  published  la- 
bors of  these  savants  will  long  continue  a  shining  and  a  guiding  light ; 
while  the  world  at  large  cannot  fail  to  find,  in  the  history  of  theii 
lives,  noble  lessons  of  the  power  of  ceaseless  and  indefatigable  labor. 

Aware  of  the  extreme  caution  necessary  in  arriving  at  conclusions 
in  so  grave  a  study  as  that  which  has  just  occupied  our  attention 
through  so  many  pages,  and  knowing  that  every  erroneous  inference 
must  either  directly  or  indirectly  retard  the  advancement  of  Ethno- 

2»3  Biographical  Sketch,  &c,  Edinburgh  New  Philosophical  Journal,  Vol.  XLVII.  p.  205. 
2'4  Memoir,  &c,  read  before  Philada.  Acad.  Nat.  Sciences,  November  6,  1851. 


OF     THE     RACES     OF     MEN.  349 

graphy,  I  have  preferred,  occasionally,  to  suggest  what  appeared  to 
rae  a  legitimate  induction,  rather  than  to  pronounce  positively  and 
authoritatively  upon  the  facts  presented.  In  the  same  cautious  man- 
ner, the  following  propositions  are  placed  before  the  reader,  as  more 
or  less  clearly  derivable  from  the  foregoing  facts  and  arguments. 

1.  That  cranial  characters  constitute  an  enduring,  natural,  and 
therefore  strictly  reliable  basis  upon  which  to  establish  a  true  classi- 
fication of  the  races  of  men. 

2.  That  the  value  of  such  characters  is  determined  by  their  con- 
stancy, rather  than  by  their  magnitude. 

3.  That  these  characters  constitute,  in  the  aggregate,  typical  forms 
of  crania. 

4.  That  historical  and  monumental  records,  and  the  remains  found  in 
ossuaries,  mounds,  &c,  indicate  a  remarkable  persistence  of  these  forms. 

5.  That  this  persistence  through  time,  as  viewed  from  a  zoological 
stand-point,  renders  it  difficult,  if  indeed  possible,  to  assign  to  the 
leading  cranial  types  any  other  than  specific  values. 

6.  That,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  however,  we  are 
by  no  means  certain  that  such  types  were  primitively  distinct.275  The 
historical  period  is  too  short  to  determine  the  question  of  original 
unity  or  diversity  of  cranial  forms.  Moreover,  this  question  loses  its 
importance  in  the  presence  of  a  still  higher  one — the  original  unity 
or  diversity  of  all  organic  forms. 

7.  That  diversity  of  cranial  types  does  not  necessarily  imply  diversity 
of  origin.  Neither  do  strong  resemblances  between  such  types  infal- 
libly indicate  a  common  parentage.  Such  resemblances  merely  express 
similarity  of  position  in  the  human  series.276 

27a  "  Those  who  have  studied  the  natural  history  of  man,"  says  Prof.  Draper,  in  his 
recent  admirable  work  on  the  'Conditions  and  Course  of  the  Life  of  Man,'  "have  occupied 
themselves  too  completely  with  the  idea  of  fixity  in  the  aspect  of  human  families,  and  have 
treated  of  them  as  though  they  were  perfectly  and  definitely  distinct,  or  in  a  condition 
of  equilibrium.  They  have  described  them  as  they  are  found  in  the  various  countries  of  the 
globe,  and  since  these  descriptions  remain  correct  during  a  long  time,  the  general  inference 
of  an  invariability  has  gathered  strength,  until  some  writers  are  to  be  found  who  suppose 
that  there  have  been  as  many  separate  creations  of  man  as  there  are  races  which  can  be 
distinguished  from  each  other.  We  are  perpetually  mistaking  the  slow  movements  of 
Nature  for  absolute  rest.     We  compound  temporary  equilibration  with  final  equilibrium." 

This  paragraph  I  find  in  Chapter  VII.,  which  is  as  singularly  unhappy  in  its  craniological 
conclusions,  as  the  leading  idea  of  the  work,  though  not  novel,  is  grand  and  philosophical. 
If  the  above  language  of  Dr.  D.  is  meant  to  be  applied  to  geological  periods  of  time,  it  is 
probably  correct ;  if  it  extends  not  beyond  the  historical  epoch,  it  is  without  the  support 
of  facts. 

276  "  S'il  n'y  a  qu'une  seule  race  muable,"  writes  J.  E.  Cornat  (de  Kochefort),  "  c'est-a- 
dire  pouvant  avoir  des  vari6te"s,  il  n'y  a  eu  a  la  genese  primitive  qu'un  seul  pere  et  qu'une 
seule  mere  (Tune  meme  espece.  S'il  y  a  plusieurs  races  immuiables.  il  y  a  eu  a  la  genese 
primitive  plusieurs  especes  de  peres  et  rle  mires.  Toute  la  question  est  done  renferme'e  dans 
la  mutabilile  ou  dans  I'immutabilite  des  races,  pour  arriver  a  la  connaissance  du  nombre  des 


350  THE    CRANIAL    CHARACTERISTICS 

8.  That  each  well-marked  cranial  type  admits  of  certain  variations 
in  its  individual  characters,  which  variations  constitute  divergent 
forms. 

9.  That  these  divergent  forms  must  not  he  confounded  with  hybrid 
types.  Both,  it  is  true,  are  produced  by  modifications  in  the  mode 
of  action  of  the  developing  principle ;  in  the  former,  however,  these 
modifications  depend  upon  climatic  conditions,  in  the  latter  they 
result  from  race-amalgamation. 

10.  That  reasons  exist  for  considering  some,  at  least,  of  the  so- 
called  artificial  deformations  as  strictly  natural  types,  representing 
very  early  humanitarian  epochs. 

11.  That  a  regular  system  of  gradation  seems  to  underlie  and  har- 
monize the  various  cranial  forms  of  the  human  family. 

12.  That  these  forms  appear  to  he  pre-represented  or  anticipated 
in  the  various  types  of  skull  exhibited  by  different  genera  and  species 
of  monkeys. 

13.  That  if  we  regard  artificial  deformations  as  the  forced  imita- 
tions of  once  natural  types,  and  upon  this  ground  admit  them  in  our 
systems  of  classification,  as  some  writers  have  done,  then  the  per- 
plexing gaps  which  seem  to  break  the  animal  chain  by  disparting 
man  and  monkeys  —  the  group  which  stands  nearest  to  man — will 
to  a  certain  extent  be  filled  intelligibly. 

espeees  primitives."  [Elements  de  Morphologic  Humaine,  2de  partie,  p.  116;  Paris,  1850.) 
The  general  immobility  of  race-characters  and  specific  forms  is  pretty  well  determined  for 
the  historic  period.  But  in  this  period  a  remarkable  equilibrium  of  physical  conditions 
has  been  maintained.  In  the  ante-historic  epoch,  the  question  of  the  mobility  or  immo- 
bility of  cranial,  in  common  with  all  organic  forms,  must  be  studied  over  a  wider  time- 
latitude,  and  nnder  altered  physical  circumstances.  If  now  we  recall  the  great  physio- 
logical fact,  that  under  the  influence  of  the  vital  principle,  organic  matter  assumes  a 
definite,  though  infinitely  diversified  form  (the  organic  cell  and  its  developmental  modi- 
fications), and  that  this  form  constitutes  the  medium  through  which  all  the  active  pheno- 
mena of  life  are  manifested,  and  if  we,  furthermore,  reflect  upon  the  mass  of  evidence 
which  strongly  tends  to  correlate,  if  not,  indeed,  to  identify  the  vital  with  the  physical 
forces,  then  it  will  appear  that  the  study  of  specific  forms,  when  carried  through  great 
geological  cycles,  is,  in  reality,  a  study,  not  so  much  of  parentage,  as  of  the  functional  or 
dynamical  energy  of  physical  conditions.  The  question  of  what  constitutes  species  is  by 
no  means  necessarily  connected  with  that  of  parentage.  Naturalists,  measuring  nature  by 
limited  periods  of  time,  have  too  often  fallen  into  the  error  of  regarding  specific  sameness 
as  a  mark  of  common  origin.  Very  philosophically  observes  Dr.  Leidt  :  "  Naturalists  have 
not  yet  systematized  that  knowledge  through  which  they  practically  estimate  the  value  of 
characters  determining  a  species.  What  maybe  viewed  as  distinct  snb-genera  by  one,  will 
be  considered  as  only  distinct  species  by  another,  and  a  third  may  view  both  as  varieties 
or  races.  In  the  use  of  these  words,  or  rather  in  the  attempt  to  define  them,  we  go  too  far 
when  we  associate  them  with  the  nature  of  the  origin  of  the  beings  in  question.  We  know 
nothing  whatever  in  relation  to  the  origin  of  living  beings,  and  even  we  cannot  positively 
deny  that  life  connected  with  some  form  was  not  co-eternal  with  time,  space,  and  matter, 
and  that  all  living  beings  have  not  successively  and  divergingly  ascended  from  the  lowest 
types."  [Description  of  Remains  of  Extinct  Mammalia.  Journal  Acad.  Nat.  Sciences,  N.  S., 
iii.  167.) 


OF     THE     RACES    OF     MEN.  351 

14.  That  typical  forms  of  crania  increase  in  number  as  we  go 
from  the  poles  to  the  equator. 

15.  That  the  lower  forms  are  found  in  the  regions  of  excessive  cold 
and  excessive  heat;  the  higher  occupying  the  middle  temperate  region. 

16.  That  cranial  forms  are  inseparably  connected  with  the  physics 
of  the  globe. 

The  entire  arctic  zone  is  characterized  by  a  remarkable  uniformity 
or  sameness  of  climatic  condition  and  animal  distribution.  The 
stunted  plants  exhibit  but  few  specific  forms ;  and  where  the  cold 
is  most  intense  and  most  prolonged,  this  uniformity  is  most  evident. 
Here,  also,  the  human  cranial  type  is  least  varied.  Bending  his  steps 
southward,  and  traversing  the  temperate  Asio-European  continent, 
the  observant  traveller  becomes  aware  of  a  gradual  increase  in  the 
light  and  heat  of  the  sun ;  and  accompanying  this  increase,  he 
beholds  a  peculiar  and  much  more  diversified  flora  and  fauna. 
At  every  step,  organic  forms  multiply  around  him,  and  monotony 
slowly  gives  place  to  variety ;  a  variety,  moreover,  in  which  a 
remarkable  system  of  resemblance  or  representation  is  preserved. 
"The  temperate  zone,"  says  Agassiz,  "is  not  characterized,  like 
the  arctic,  by  one  and  the  same  fauna;  it  does  not  form,  as  the 
arctic  does,  one  continuous  zoological  zone  around  the  globe." 
And,  again,  he  says :  "  The  geographical  distribution  of  animals 
in  this  zone,  forms  several  closely  connected,  but  distinct  com- 
binations." Now,  we  have  already  seen  that  the  globular,  cranial 
type  of  this  region  is  more  varied  than  the  pyramidal  form  of  the 
extreme  North.  The  Kalmuck  or  true  Mongolian,  the  Tartar, 
Chinese,  Japanese,  and  Turkish  types  of  skull  are  all,  to  a  certain 
extent,  related,  and  yet  are  all  readily  distinguishable  from  each 
other.  Each  of  these  groups,  again,  presents  several  cranial  va- 
rieties. So,  among  the  barbarous  aborigines  of  North  America, 
notwithstanding  the  general  osteologic  assimilation  of  their  crania, 
important  tribal  distinctions  can  be  readily  pointed  out.  It  is  inte- 
resting also  to  remark,  that  in  the  Turkish  area,  we  are  to  look  for 
the  traces  of  transition  from  the  Mongolian  to  the  European  forms 

—  a  fact  singularly  in  keeping  with  the  statement  of  Agassiz,  that 
the  Caspian  fauna  partakes  partly  of  the  Asiatic,  and  partly  of  the 
European  zoological  character. 

It  is  a  general  and  very  well-known  fact — first  noticed  by  Buffbn 

—  that  the  fauna  and  flora  of  the  old  world  are  not  specifically  iden- 
tical with  the  fauna  and  flora  of  the  new.  Their  relationship  is 
manifested  in  an  interesting  system  of  representation,  or  as  Schouw 
expresses  it,  of  geographical  repetition  according  to  climate.  To  a 
certain  extent,  human  cranial  forms  appear  also  to  fall  within  the 
limits  of  this  system.     As  far  as  my  own  opportunities  for  exami- 


352  CRANIAL     CHARACTERISTICS. 

nation  have  gone,  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  a  single  aboriginal 
American  type  of  skull  which,  in  all  its  essential  details,  could  be 
regarded  as  strictly  identical  with  any  in  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  or 
Australia.  The  closest  approximation  between  the  two  hemi- 
spheres, in  this  respect,  is  to  be  found  in  the  Arctic  region ;  and 
it  is  precisely  in  this  region  that  the  organic  species  of  the  two 
worlds  resemble  each  other  most  closely.  The  massive,  heavy 
skulls  of  northern  temperate  Asia  and  Europe  are  represented  in 
America  by  those  of  the  Barbarous  tribes  —  decidedly  different,  but 
allied  forms.  So  the  comparatively  small-headed  Peruvians  repre- 
sent the  equally  small-headed  Hindoos,  while  the  American  Indian 
type,  according  to  Lieut.  Habersham,  again  repeats  itself  in  a  most 
curious  manner  in  the  Island  of  Formosa. 

It  would  thus  appear,  that  upon  the  same  general  principles,  of 
which  Humboldt  availed  himself  in  dividing  the  surface  of  the  earth 
into  isothermic  zones,  or  that  Latreille  followed  in  laying  clown  his 
iusect-realms,  or  that  guided  Forbes  in  the  construction  of  homoiozoic 
belts  of  marine  life,  the  ethnographer  may  establish,  with  equal  pro- 
priety, hcmoiokephalic  zones  or  realms  of  meu,  whose  limits,  though 
far  from  being  sharply  defined,  are  nevertheless  sufficiently  well- 
marked  to  show  that  nature's  idea  of  localization  and  representation 
appertains  to  man,  as  to  all  the  numerous  and  varied  forms  of  life. 

"When,  at  length,  our  traveller  reaches  the  tropics,  he  there,  under 
the  calorific  and  luminous  influence  of  a  powerful  sun,  beholds  animal 
and  vegetable  life  revelling  in  a  multiplicity  of  forms.  Human 
cranial  types  constitute  no  exception  to  this  statement.  In  the 
African  and  Polynesian  regions  of  the  sun,  the  races  or  tribes  of 
men,  differing  from  each  other  in  physical  characters,  are,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  quite  numerous.  The  same  appears  to  be  true 
also,  though  in  a  less  marked  degree,  in  northern  South  America. 
Finally,  then,  in  view  of  all  these  leading  facts,  whose  details  would 
here  be  obviously  misplaced,  may  we  not  conclude  that  cranial  forms 
are  definitely  related  to  geographical  locality,  and  its  attendant  climatic 
conditions :  and  may  we  not,  furthermore,  suspect  that  the  unity  of  such 
forms  should  be  sought  neither  in  a  uniformity  of  structural  plan,  nor 
in  the  successive  development  of  higher  from  lower  types,  nor  even 
in  the  organic  cell,  the  primordial  expression  of  the  animal  and  the 
plant,  but  in  that  pervading  physical  principle  whose  plastic  energy 
attains  its  maximum  in  the  regions  overlying  the  thermometric  equa- 
tor, and  under  whose  controlling  influence  all  matter — both  organic 
and  inorganic  —  assumes  a  regular  and  definite  form  ? 

J.  A.  M. 

Philadelphia,  No.  597  Lombard  St. 


ACCLIMATION,    ETC. 


CHAPTEE   IV. 

ACCLIMATION ;  OR,  THE  COMPARATIVE  INFLUENCE  OF  CLIMATE,  ENDEMIC 
AND  EPIDEMIC  DISEASES,  ON  THE  RACES  OF  MAN. 

BY  J.  C.  NOIT,  M.D. 


In  the  preceding  chapters,  man  has  been  viewed  from  opposite 
stand-points ;  and  each  new  group  of  facts  would  seem  to  lead  more 
and  more  directly  to  the  conclusion,  that  certain  distinct  types 
of  the  human  family  are  as  ancient  and  as  permanent  as  the  Faunas 
and  Floras  which  surround  them. 

"We  propose,  in  the  present  chapter,  to  investigate  the  subject  of 
Acclimation;  that  is  to  say,  of  Races,  in  their  relations  to  Climate, 
Endemic  and  Epidemic  Diseases ;  and  if  it  should  be  made  to  appear 
that  each  type  of  mankind,  like  a  species  of  animals  or  plants,  has 
its  appropriate  climate  or  station,  and  that  it  cannot  by  any  process, 
however  gradual,  or  in  any  number  of  generations,  become  fully 
habituated  to  those  of  opposite  character,  another  strong  confirma- 
tion will  be  added  to  the  conclusion  above  alluded  to. 

The  study  of  the  physical  history  of  man  is  beset  by  numerous 
difficulties,  such  as  embarrass  no  other  department  of  Zoology.  Man 
has  not  only  a  physical,  but  a  moral  nature ;  the  latter  forming  an 
important  element  in  the  investigation,  and  exerting  a  powerful 
influence  over  his  physical  structure.  Inasmuch  as  we  are  now 
seeking  to  ascertain  all  those  agencies  which  can  in  any  way  modify 
the  physical  condition  of  individuals  or  races,  we  shall,  for  conve- 
nience, include,  under  the  general  term  of  Climate,1  geographical 

1  This  is  a  loose  definition,  but  we  have  no  word  in  our  language  sufficiently  comprehen- 
sive to  answer  our  purpose.  The  French  employ  the  term  milieu,  which  covers  the  ground 
fully.  The  milieu  (middle)  in  which  an  animal  or  plant  is  placed,  includes  every  modifying 
influence  belonging  to  the  locality.  The  reader  will  therefore  excuse  me  for  using  an  old 
word  in  a  new  and  arbitrary  sense. 

28 


354      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  op 

position,  habits,  social  condition,  moral  influences;  in  short,  every 
combination  of  circumstances  that  can  change  the  constitution  of 
man. 

The  subject  of  Climate  may  be  divided,  and  treated  under  two 
distinct  heads,  viz. — -Physical  Climate  and  Medical  Climate.  The 
consideration  of  the  former  appertains  more  particularly  to  the 
naturalist,  whose  province  it  is  to  treat  of  botanical  and  zoological 
geography,  or  the  geographical  distribution  of  animals  and  plants. 
Followed  out  in  all  its  bearings,  this  department  has  been  made,  by 
Prichard  and  others,  to  include  the  whole  physical  history  of  man, 
and  to  explain  all  the  diversities  of  type  seen  in  the  human  family. 
The  latter,  or  Medical  Climate,  refers  to  climate  in  its  effects  on  the 
body,  whether  in  preventing,  causing,  or  curing  diseases ;  and  it  is 
this  branch  of  the  subject  which  will  mainly  engage  our  attention  at 
present,  although  we  shall  be  obliged  incidentally  to  trench  upon 
the  other. 

Our  limits  forbid  the  examination  in  detail,  to  any  extent,  of  the 
effects  of  Physical  Climate;  but,  fortunately,  knowledge  in  this 
department  has  so  greatly  advanced  of  late  years,  as  to  permit  us  to 
pass  over,  as  well  settled  among  naturalists,  certain  points  which 
formerly  consumed  a  large  share  of  time.  It  was  long  taught,  for 
example,  that  types  were  constantly  changing  and  new  ones  form- 
ing, under  the  influence  of  existing  causes ;  but  we  may  now  assume, 
without  the  fear  of  contradiction  from  a  naturalist,  that,  within  his- 
torical times,  no  example  can  be  adduced  of  the  transformation  of 
one  type  of  man  into  another,  or  of  the  origination  of  a  new  type. 
Writers  still  living  have  boldly  attributed  to  climate  almost  illimi- 
table influence  on  man.  Numerous  citations  have  been  given,  from 
credulous  travellers,  showing  examples  of  white  men  transformed 
by  a  tropical  sun  into  negroes ;  of  negroes  blanched  into  Caucasians ; 
of  Jews  changed  into  Hindoos,  Africans,  American  Indians,  and 
what  not.  In  short,  the  whole  human  family  has  been  derived  (as 
well  as  all  the  animals  of  the  earth)  from  Noah's  ark,  which  landed 
on  Mount  Ararat  some  4000  years  ago. 

Such  crude  ideas  obstinately  maintained  their  ground,  in  spite  of 
science,  until  it  was  proven  beyond  dispute,  from  the  venerable 
monuments  of  Egypt,  that  the  races  of  men,  of  all  colors,  now  seen 
around  the  Mediterranean,  inhabited  the  same  countries,  with  their 
present  physical  characteristics,  fully  5000  years  ago ;  that  is,  long 
before  the  birth  of  either  Moses,  Noah,  or  even  Adam — were  we  to 
believe  in  the  chronology  of  Archbishop  Usher.  Nor  did  these 
various  races  exist  merely  as  scattered  individuals  in  those  early 
times,  but  as  nations,  warring  with  each  other.     Since  these  discove- 


CLIMATE     A]STD    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  35-5 

ries,  we  hear,  among  the  well  informed,  no  more  abont  the  influence 
of  existing  climates  in  transforming  races.2 

No  one  who  has  studied  the  natural  history  of  man  will  he  dis- 
posed to  deny  the  great  modifying  influence  of  both  physical  and 
moral  causes ;  but  the  questions  arise  as  to  the  nature  and  extent  of 
the  changes  produced.  Has  any  one  type  been  transformed  into 
another  ?  or  has  a  new  one  originated  since  the  living  types  of  the 
animal  kingdom  were  called  into  existence  ? 

That  the  modifying  influence  of  climate  is  great,  nay,  quite  as 
great,  on  man,  as  on  many  of  the  inferior  animals,  we  possess  the 
evidence  around  us  every  day  in  our  cities.  By  way  of  illustration, 
the  Jewish  race  might  be  cited,  being  the  one  most  widely  spread, 
the  longest  and  most  generally  known.  Whenever  the  word  Jew  is 
pronounced,  a  peculiar  type  is  at  once  called  up  to  the  mind's  eye ; 
and  wherever,  in  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  surrounded  by  other 
races,  the  descendants  of  Abraham  are  encountered,  this  type  at 
once  stands  out  in  bold  relief.  In  each  one  of  the  synagogues  of 
our  large  cities  (in  the  United  States),  may  be  seen  congregated, 
every  Saturday,  Israelites  from  various  nationalities  of  the  earth. 
Nevertheless,  although  they  differ  notably  in  stature,  form,  com- 
plexion, hair,  shape  and  size  of  head,  presenting  in  fact  infinite 
varieties,  yet,  when  of  pure  Hebrew  blood,  they  all  revolve  around  a 
common  type,  which  identifies  their  race. 

It  should  be  remarked,  in  passing,  that  the  Jewish,  though  com- 
paratively a  pure  race,  is  notwithstanding  much  adulterated  by 
inter-marriages  with  Gentiles  during  all  ages,  from  the  time  of 
Abraham  to  the  present.  It  is  true  that  we  often  see  individuals 
worshipping  at  their  shrines  who  are  wanting  in  the  true  lineaments 
of  the  race ;  but  this  may  be  always  explained  by  the  admixture  of 
foreign  blood,  or  through  conversions  of  other  types  to  Judaism.3 
It  has  been  clearly  shown  that  the  Jewish  type  can  be  followed  up 
through  the  stream  of  time  backward  from  the  present  day  to  the 
IV.  Dynasty  of  Egypt  (a  period  of  more  than  5000  years),  where  it 
stands  face  to  face  with  that  of  the  Egyptian  and  other  races.  This 
type,  too,  is  abundantly  and  beautifully  delineated  amid  the  ruins 
of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  back  to  ages  coetaneous  with  the  Hebrew 
monarchy.* 


2  The  unity  party  have  been  obliged,  since  these  discoveries  in  Egypt,  to  abandon  all 
scientific  deductions,  or  reasoning  from  facts,  and  to  fall  back  upon  a  miraculous  transfor- 
mation of  one  race  into  many ;  which  metamorphosis  is  supposed  to  have  occurred  prior  to 
the  foundation  of  the  Egyptian,  Chinese,  and  Hindoo  empires. 

3  See  "  Types  of  Mankind,"  Chap.  IV.,  "Physical  History  of  the  Jews." 
*  Ibid.     Also,  Layard's  Nineveh. 


?>56      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

All  races  of  men,  like  animals,  possess  a  certain  degree  of  consti- 
tutional pliability,  which  enables  them  to  bear  great  changes  of 
temperature  or  latitude ;  and  those  races  that  are  indigenous  to 
temperate  climates,  having  a  wide  thermometrical  range,  support 
best  the  extremes  of  other  latitudes,  whether  hot  or  cold.  Hence 
such  races  might  be  regarded  almost  as  cosmopolites.  In  accordance 
with  this  idea,  the  Jews,  who  were  originally  scattered  between  30° 
and  40°  north  latitude  (where  they  were  subjected  to  considerable 
heat  in  summer  and  cold  in  winter),  were  already  well  prepared  to 
become  acclimated  to  far  greater  extremes  of  temperature  in  other 
latitudes.  The  inhabitants  of  the  Arctic,  also,  as  well  as  those  of 
the  Tropics,  have  a  certain  pliancy  of  constitution ;  but,  while  the 
Jew  and  other  inhabitants  of  the  middle  latitudes  may  migrate  30 
degrees  south,  or  30  degrees  north,  with  comparative  impunity,  the 
Eskimau  on  the  one  extreme,  or  the  Negro,  Hindoo,  and  Malay 
on  the  other,  have  no  power  to  withstand  the  vicissitudes  of  climate 
encountered  in  traversing  the  70  degrees  of  latitude  between  Green- 
land and  the  equator.  Each  race  has  its  prescribed  salubrious  limits. 
The  fair  races  of  Northern  Europe,  below  the  Arctic  zone,  of  which 
the  Anglo-Saxons  are  impure  descendants,  will  serve  as  another 
illustration.  These  races  are  now -scattered  over  most  parts  of  the 
habitable  globe ;  and,  in  many  instances,  they  have  undergone  far 
greater  physical  changes  than  the  Jews.  The  climates,  for  instance, 
of  Jamaica,  Louisiana,  and  India,  are  to  them  much  more  extreme 
than  to  the  Jewish  race.  The  Israelite  may  be  recognized  any- 
where ;  but  not  so  with  the  Scandinavian  and  his  descendants  in  the 
tropics.  The  latter  becomes  tanned,  emaciated,  debilitated ;  his 
countenance,  energy,  everything  undergoes  a  change :  and  were  we 
not  familiar,  from  daily  observation,  with  these  effects  of  climate 
upon  northern  races,  we  should  not  suspect  the  original  ancestry  of 
many  of  the  present  inhabitants  of  hot  climates.  In  these  cases  we 
behold,  not  simply  a  healthful  modification  of  the  physical  and 
intellectual  man,  but  a  positively  morbid  degradation.  The  pure 
white  man  carried  into  the  tropic  deteriorates  both  in  mind  and 
body;  the  average  duration  of  his  life  is  lessened;  and,  without 
fresh  importations,  his  race  would  in  time  become  extinct.  When, 
however,  his  descendants  are  taken  back  to  their  native  climes,  they 
revert  to  the  healthful  standard  of  their  original  types :  the  latter 
may  have  been  distorted,  but  can  never  be  lost,  except  in  death. 

[This  fact  may  be  familiarly  exemplified  by  the  habits  of  English 
sojourners  {colonists  they  cannot  be  termed)  now  scattered  through- 
out Hindostan  and  the  Indian  Archipelago,  on  both  sides  of  Africa 
a  few  hundred  miles  north  of  the  Cape,  along  the  southern  shores 


CLIMATE    AND    DISEASES    ON    MAN.  357 

of  the  Mediterranean,  in  the  West  Indies,  South  America,  and  else- 
where. Such  emigrants  are,  moreover,  out  of  all  proportion,  athletic 
adults  before  quitting  their  birth-place;  who  set  forth  with  the 
intention,  and  are  ever  cheered  by  the  hope,  of  returning  home  the 
moment  their  ambition  is  realized.  Few,  notwithstanding,  come 
back  to  their  native  land  with  constitutions  unimpaired;  but,  in  no 
cases  do  those  English  whose  means  are  not  absolutely  insignificant, 
attempt  to  rear  up  their  children  in  any  of  the  above  tropical 
regions.  If  they  do  so,  parents  mourn  over  the  graves  of  lost 
offspring,  or  sigh  on  beholding  the  sickly  appearance  of  the  sur- 
viving: of  the  latter,  an  adult  generation,  especially  amongst  the 
females,  suffering  under  hourly-increasing  morbific  influence,  is 
destined  to  succumb  far  within  the  average  limits  of  longevity  that 
would  have  been  accorded  to  them  by  a  life-insurance  actuary,  had 
they  grown  up  in  Europe.  On  the  contrary,  every  sacrifice  is  made, 
under  the  name  of  "education,"  to  send  them  homeward,  in  order 
that  they  may  become  constitutionally  retempered,  before  they  are 
once  more  exposed  to  such  deleterious  intertropical  influences.  So 
true  is  this  rule,  that,  on  the  authority  of  a  friend  of  Mr.  Gliddon's, 
Major  General  Bagnold,  of  the  Hon.  East  India  Company's  Service 
— a  veteran  who  now,  with  his  family,  in  London,  practically  carries 
into  effect  half  a  century  of  Oriental  experiences — we  know  that  the 
oldest  purely-English  regiment  in  India,  the  "Bombay  Tufts,"  not- 
withstanding that  marriages  with  British  females  are  encouraged, 
has  never  been  able,  from  the  time  of  Charles  H.  to  the  present 
hour,  to  rear,  from  births  in  the  corps,  boys  enough  to  supply  its 
drummers  and  fifers. 

The  same  rule  holds  good  with  the  Dutch  in  Batavia  and  other 
Indian  islands.  Their  children,  when  of  pure  blood,  in  health  are 
weakly;  when  half-caste,  worse.  Where,  however,  as  frequently 
happens  in  our  Gulf  States,  such  half-caste  is  produced  by  the  union 
of  South  {dark)  Europeans  with  negresses  or  squaws,  a  hardier 
animal  appears  to  be  the  result.     Hear  Desjobbrt  : 

"Le  Francais  s'acclimate-t-il?  ses  enfans  s  elevent-ils  en  Algerie?  We  speak  of  Frenchmen, 
and  not  of  those  Spanish,  Italian,  and  Maltese  populations  which,  coming  from  a  country 
more  analogous  in  climate  [and  heing  in  type  dark  races,  also],  bear  better  than  our  fellow- 
countrymen  the  influence  of  the  African  climate. 

"  Algerian  colonists  have  always  confounded,  under  the  same  name  of  colony,  every 
establishment  of  Europeans  out  of  Europe.  They  have  not  reflected  that,  in  climates 
different  from  those  of  Europe,  he  [the  European]  labors  but  little  in  body.  He  more 
frequently  commands,  administrates,  or  follows  mercantile  pursuits  in  the  cities  [not  in  the 
country]. 

"  French  and  English  races  labor  in  Canada,  in  the  northern  parts  of  the  United  States, 
and  in  New  Holland;  but,  in  the  Southern  States  of  the  Union,  at  the  Antilles,  Guayanas, 


358      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

and  the  isles  of  Mauritius  and  Bourbon,  it  is  the  [exotic]  blacks  who  work ;  in  India,  it  is 
the  Hindoo. 

"  Spaniards,  it  is  true,  do  labor  a  little  at  Cuba  and  at  Porto  Eico.  But  they  had  inha- 
bited, in  Europe,  a  hotter  climate  than  the  French  and  English.  [For  the  same  reason, 
joined  to  their  dark  race,  our  white  fishermen,  in  the  bayous  from  Charleston,  S.  C,  to 
Galveston,  Texas,  are  the  only  men  who,  with  comparative  security,  ply  their  vocation  the 
whole  year  round:  and  they  are  Spaniards,  Portuguese,  Maltese,  or  else  mulattos.]  They 
work  also  a  little  in  America,  especially  when  the  altitude  of  the  soil  makes  up  for  the 
latitude  of  the  country,  as  in  Mexico  and  Peru ;  or  when  the  climate  is  far  more  temperate, 
as  in  Buenos  Ayres ;  and  even  then,  this  labor  cannot  be  compared  to  the  work  performed 
in  France  and  in  England  [and  north  of  "  Mason  and  Dixon's  line"].  At  the  Philippines, 
it  is  the  native  that  labors. 

"The  Dutchman  works  not  out  of  Europe:  at  Java,  it  is  the  Malay;  at  Guyana,  it  is 
the  black  who  labors. 

"  The  Portuguese  never  labors  in  India.  In  Brazil  and  at  Guyana  it  is  the  black  who 
works  for  him;"  [in  Central  America,  it  is  the  Carib,  the  Toltecan  Indian,  or  the  half- 
caste.]5 

In  Egypt,  no  European  nor  Turk  risks  his  own  person  as  an 
agriculturist:  the  labor  is  performed  there,  as  in  Mesopotamia,  by 
the  indigenous  Fellah.  At  Madagascar  the  Frenchman,  as  in  Sierra 
Leone  the  Englishman,  dies  off  if  he  attempts  it.  In  Algeria,  the 
French  are  beginning  to  find  out  that,  unless  the  Arab  or  the  Kabyle 
will  plough  the  fields  for  them,  colonization  is  hopeless.6  And,  lastly, 
were  not  this  fact  of  the  non-acclimation  of  white  races,  a  few 
degrees  north  and  south  of  the  equinoctial  line,  now  recognized  by 
experience,  why  should  Coolies  from  India  and  Malayana,  as  well  as 
Chinese  "apprentices,"  be  eagerly  contracted  for  at  Bourbon,  the 
Mauritius,  the  West  Indies,  and  in  Southern  America  ? 

The  truth  of  these  propositions  will  be  investigated  hereinafter.] 
The  negro,  too,  obeys  the  law  of  climate.    Unlike  the  white  man, 

6  Desjobert,  L'Algerie,  Paris,  1847,  pp.  6,  7,  and  26,  notes. 

"Nous  ne  comptons  ici  les  hommes  morts  dans  les  hopitaux  [i.  e.  71  per  1000,  in  1846 
alone!],  et  nons  ne  parlons  pas  de  ceux  qui,  reTormgs,  vont  mourir  dans  lenrs  families. 
Nous  ne  parlons  pas  non  plus  de  ceux  tu6s  par  le  feu  de  l'ennemi :  ils  sont  peu  nombreux. 

Nous  perdons  par  an,  en  Afrique,  environ 200  hommes. 

"  Nous  avons  perdu  en  1846 116        " 

"  A  la  prise  de  Constantine.., 100       " 

"  A  la  bataille  d'Isly 27       " 

"  AlaSmalah 9        " 

"  '  Tout  homme  faible  qu'on  envoie  en  Afrique  est  un  homme  perdu.'  —  Marechai 
Bugeaud,  discours  du  19  fevrier,  1838." 

6  See  Discours  prononce  par  M.  Desjobert  (Representative  in  the  Assemblee  Rationale), 
Paris,  1850;  Idem,  Documents  Statistiques  sur  VAlgerie,  1851;  Boudin,  Hisioire  Statistique 
de  la  Colonisation  et  de  la  Population  en  Algerie,  Paris,  1853,  passim. 

It  is  with  much  disappointment  that  I  am  compelled  to  go  to  press  with  these  evidences 
of  the  non-acclimation  of  races,  without  having  received  a  copy  of  the  work  which  Dr. 
Boudin  has  in  press  (Traite  de  Geographie  et  de  Siatistique  Medicates,  2  vols.  8vo.,  at  Bail- 
lifere's,  Paris).  Mr.  Gliddon  tells  me  that  he  perused  some  of  its  proof-sheets  at  the  author's 
house,  in  Oct.,  1855. 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  359 

his  complexion  undergoes  no  change  by  climate.  While  the  white 
man  is  darkened  by  the  tropical  sun,  the  negro  is  never  blanched  in 
the  slightest  degree  by  a  residence  in  northern  latitudes.  Like  the 
quadrumana  of  the  tropics,  he  is  inevitably  killed  by  cold ;  but  it 
never  changes  his  hair,  complexion,  skeleton,  nor  size  and  shape  of 
brain.7  We  do  not  propose,  however,  to  enter  into  this  discussion 
here.  Our  object  is  simply  to  call  attention  to  the  independence  of 
existing  types,  of  all  climatic  causes  now  in  operation. 

While  naturalists  have  been  accumulating  so  much  useful  infor- 
mation concerning  the  history,  durability,  &c,  of  species  in  the 
animal  kingdom,  they  leave  us  still  in  utter  darkness  as  to  the  time 
or  manner  of  their  origin.  Our  actual  Flora  and  Fauna  extend,  it 
is  now  ascertained,  many  thousand  years  beyond  the  chronologies 
taught  in  our  schools  to  children ;  but  whether  man  and  his  asso- 
ciates have  existed  ten  or  one  hundred  thousand  years,  we  have  no 
data  for  determining.  Lepsius  tells  us  that  he  regards  even  the 
records  of  the  early  (Hid  and  FVth)  dynasties  of  Egypt,  as  a  part 
of  the  modern  history  of  man. 

That  organized  beings  have  existed  on  earth  (in  the  language  of 
the  great  geologist  Lyell)  "millions  of  ages,"  no  naturalist  of  our 
day  will  doubt;  and  although  our  knowledge  is  not  sufficiently 
complete  to  enable  us  to  follow  Nature's  great  chain,  link  by  link, 
yet  it  appears  probable  that  there  has  been  an  ascending  series, 
commencing  with  the  simplest  forms  and  ending  with  man.  Geolo- 
gists have  arranged  the  materials  which  compose  the  crust  of  the 
earth  into  igneous  and  sedimentary.  The  first,  as  the  name  implies, 
are  formed  by  the  action  of  heat  under  superincumbent  pressure, 
and  are  composed  of  an  aggregate  of  crystalline  particles,  without 
any  order  or  stratification.  Sedimentary  rocks  are  composed  of  the 
fragments  of  older  rocks,  worn  down  by  the  action  of  the  elements, 
and  deposited  in  the  ocean,  whence,  by  pressure,  heat,  and  chemical 
agency,  they  are  re-formed  into  new  masses,  assuming  a  stratified  and 
more  or  less  slaty  structure. 

To  say  nothing  of  subdivisions,  the  whole  series  have  been  divided 
into  igneous  rocks,  primary  stratified  formations,  secondary  forma- 
tions, tertiary  formations,  and  diluvial  formations.  In  the  first  two 
divisions  we  find  no  traces  of  life,  animal  or  vegetable ;  in  the  se- 
condary we  find  numerous  plants,  mollusks,  reptiles,  and  fishes ;  and, 


'  The  negro  races  are  peculiarly  liable  to  consumption  out  of  the  tropics,  or  even  within 
them.  They  are  never  agriculturists,  either  in  Egypt  or  in  Barbary :  nevertheless,  in  both 
countries,  negroes  are  the  shortest  lived  of  the  population.  Monkeys  suffer  to  a  great 
extent  with  the  same  disease,  in  the  Garden  of  Plants,  at  Paris.  Nowhere  in  North  Europe 
or  in  our  Northern  States,  can  the  Orang-utan  live. 


360      acclimation;    or,   the  influence  op 

when  we  reach  the  tertiary,  we  find  the  shell  animals  approaching 
nearer,  in  specific  forms,  to  existing  species,  than  those  of  previous 
formations ;  and  along  with  these  are  skeletons  of  birds  and  mam- 
malia, including  quadrupeds  and  quadrumana.  The  geological 
epoch  of  man  has  yet  to  be  determined :  it  is  certain  that  the  investi- 
gations of  each  succeeding  year  tend  to  throw  it  further  back  in 
time ;  nor  are  there  wanting  good  authorities  who  would  not  be 
surprised  to  find  his  remains  in  the  tertiary,  where  the  quadrumana 
have  been  recently,  and  for  the  first  time,  discovered. 

A  discussion  of  such  difficulty  and  magnitude  as  the  theory  of 
progressive  development,  would  be  out  of  place  here ;  but  this  idea 
seems  to  have  taken  possession  of  many  of  our  leading  authorities. 
Nor,  at  first  sight,  would  it  seem  that  the  long-mooted  question  of 
the  origin  of  species  could  properly  find  a  place  in  an  essay  on 
Medical  Qlimate;  yet  all  these  subjects  have  points  of  contact,  which 
render  it  difficult  to  isolate  them.  Our  object  being  to  study  the 
influence  of  climates  and  their  diseases  on  races,  we  assuredly,  d 
priori,  should  expect  species  and  mere  varieties  to  be  influenced  in 
different  degrees.  Natural  history  teaches  us  that  the  white  and 
black  races,  for  example,  are  distinct  species.  We  should,  therefore, 
regard  their  origin  as  independent  of  climate;  and  if  we  can  show 
that  these  races  are  not  affected  in  like  manner  by  diseases,  we  fortify 
the  conclusion  to  which  natural  history  has  led  us.  Well-ascertained 
varieties  of  a  given  species,  however  widely  scattered,  may  exchange 
habitations  with  comparative  impunity ;  while,  on  the  contrary,  as  a 
general  rule,  each  species  of  a  genus  has  its  prescribed  geographical 
range.  The  species,  for  example,  of  the  reindeer  and  the  white  bear, 
in  the.  Arctic,  can  no  more  exchange  places  with  the  deer  and  bear 
of  the  Tropics,  than  can  the  Esquimau  with  the  tropical  Negro. 
Such  facts  as  these,  then,  clearly  show  how  deeply  our  subject 
implicates  the  investigation  of  species  and  varieties. 

A  great  diversity  of  opinion  has  existed  with  regard  to  the  origin 
of  species,  but  we  shall  allude  only  to  two  of  the  more  prominent. 
Of  the  first  school,  Cuvier  may  be  regarded  as  the  most  distinguished 
authority.  He  contends  that  the  geological  history  of  the  earth 
should  be  divided  into  distinct  periods,  each  of  which  is  complete  in 
itself;  that  there  has  been,  since  the  dawn  of  life,  a  succession  of 
distinct  creations  and  destructions;  and  that  the  organized  beings  of 
one  epoch  have  no  direct  connection,  by  way  of  descent,  with  those 
of  the  preceding.  According  to  this  theory,  the  species  of  animals 
and  plants  now  scattered  over  the  face  of  the  earth  are  primordial 
forms,  the  result  of  a  special  creation ;  which  have  endured  without 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  361 

material  change  to  the  present,  and  which  ivill  endure  unchanged 
until  their  allotted  term  of  existence  has  expired. 

The  opposing  school  may  he  represented  by  Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire, 
the  contemporary  of  Cuvier.  It  is  contended  by  his  followers  that 
there  has  been  but  one  creation,  and  no  cessation  of  life,  since  the 
first  organized  beings  were  brought  into  existence ;  that,  by  a  law 
of  progressive  development  or  evolution,  in  accordance  with  new 
climatic  influences,  brought  into  action,  from  time  to  time,  by 
changes  in  the  physical  condition  of  the  globe,  the  living  beings  of 
one  period  have  given  origin  to  those  which  follow;  and  so  on 
through  the  whole  chain,  from  the  earliest  and  simplest  forms  to  the 
last  and  most  complex.  Moreover,  that  what  we  term  species  remains 
permanent  as  long  as  the  physical  conditions  which  produced  them 
remain  unchanged.  Some  of  this  school  go  so  far  as  to  assert  that 
no  such  tiling  as  "species"  exists;  that  Nature  creates  only  indivi- 
duals, no  two  animals  or  plants  being  exactly  alike,  and  the  species 
of  each  genus  running  together  so  closely  as  to  leave  their  bounda- 
ries difficult,  and  often  impossible,  to  define.  They  further  contend, 
that  transformations  of  species  are  incessantly  going  on  around  us, 
though  so  slowly  as  not  to  be  easily  recognized,  in  the  atom  of  time 
which  has  been  consumed  so  far  by  the  human  family. 

Those  who  contend  that  all  the  races  of  men  are  of  common 
origin,  must,  in  spite  of  themselves,  fall  into  these  heterodox  opinions 
of  Lamarck,  Oken,  and  St.  Hilaire ;  because  the  races  of  men  differ 
quite  as  much,  anatomically  and  physiologically,  as  do  the  species 
of  other  genera  in  the  animal  kingdom  —  the  Equidte,  the  Ursines, 
Felines,  &c.  Professor  Owen  himself  cannot  point  out  greater 
differences  between  the  lion,  tiger,  and  panther,  or  the  dog,  fox, 
wolf,  and  jackal,  than  those  between  the  White  Man,  Negro,  and 
Mongol. 

According  to  the  above  doctrine,  not  only  are  the  individuals  of 
our  present  Fauna  and  Flora  direct  descendants  of  the  fossil  world, 
but  they  are  probably  destined  to  be  the  ancestry  of  others  still 
more  perfect.  The  climatic  influences  now  at  work,  it  is  supposed, 
will  be  changed,  and  development  take  up  its  line  of  march  and  cany 
on  the  great  plan  of  the  Creator.  Thus,  man  himself  is  to  be  the 
progenitor  of  beings  far  more  perfect  than  himself;  and  it  must  be 
confessed  that  there  is  no  small  room  for  improvement.  But  there 
is  no  good  reason  why  we  should  enter  the  lists  with  these  dispu- 
tants, as  the  two  schools  unite  at  a  point  which  meets  all  the  requi- 
sitions of  our  present  investigation.  The  term  species  is,  at  best, 
but  a  conventional  one,  without  a  fixed  definition ;  and  is  used  by 
both  parties  to  designate  certain  groups  of  forms  closely  resembling 


362       acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

each  other,  that  have  been  permanent  as  far  back  as  our  means  of 
investigation  reach,  and  which  will  endure  as  long  as  the  Faunas 
and  Floras  of  which  they  form  a  part. 

Our  declared  object  is  to  ascertain  what  influence  the  climates  of 
our  day  exert  over  existing  forms,  and  especially  over  those  of  the 
human  family.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  each  species  has  its 
own  physiological  and  pathological  laws,  which  give  it  its  specific 
character ;  and  each  species  must,  therefore,  be  made  a  special  study. 
Too  much  reliance  has  been  placed  upon  analogies;  since  no  one 
animal  should  be  taken  as  an  analogue  for  another.  Not  only  are 
they  variously  affected  by  climate,  food,  &c,  but  also  by  morbific 
influences.  These  remarks  apply  with  their  greatest  force  to  man, 
who  is  widely  separated  from  the  lower  animals  in  many  things,  and 
more  particularly  his  diseases.  The  "  Societe  Zoologique  d' Acclima- 
tion" of  Paris,  is  composed  of  some  of  the  most  scientific  men  of 
France,  with  I.  Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire  at  its  head ;  and  to  them  each 
new  species  is  a  new  study :  they  look  to  time  and  observation  alone 
for  their  knowledge.  "When  a  new  quadruped,  bird,  or  plant,  is 
brought  to  France,  no  one  pretends  to  foretell  the  exact  influence 
of  the  new  climate  upon  it ;  and  it  has  been  ascertained  that  two 
species,  brought  from  the  same  habitat,  may  be  very  differently 
affected.  One  may  become  habituated  to  a  wide  geographical  range, 
while  another  only  to  a  very  limited  one. 

So  it  is  with  the  species  of  man — each  must  be  made  a  separate 
study,  in  connection  with  both  Physical  and  Medical  Climate.  It  does 
not  at  all  advance  our  knowledge  of  man  to  tell  us  that  pigs,  poultry, 
horses,  cattle,  sheep,  goats,  dogs,  &c,  may  be  carried  all  over  the 
world,  may  become  habituated  to  all  climates,  and  everywhere 
change  their  forms  or  colors.  A  race  of  men  does  not  anywhere, 
in  a  few  generations,  like  pigs,  become  white,  brown,  black,  gray, 
or  spotted ;  nor  do  the  pigs,  when  they  accompany  man  to  the 
Tropics,  become  affected  with  dyspepsia,  intermittent  and  yellow 
fever.  It  has  been  the  fashion,  for  want  of  argument,  to  obscure 
the  natural  history  of  man,  not  by  a  few,  but  by  volumes  of  these 
analogies.  Let  us  ask,  on  the  other  hand,  when  and  where  have 
the  people  of  the'  north  become  habituated  to  the  climate  of  the 
Tropics,  or  those  of  the  Tropics  been  able  to  live  in  the  north  ?  We 
have  no  records  to  show  that  a  race  of  one  extreme  has  ever  been 
acclimated  to  the  opposite;  and  as  long  as  a  race  preserves  its 
peculiar  physiological  structure  and  laws,  it  must  to  some  extent  be 
peculiarly  affected  by  morbific  influences.8 

8  It  is  far  from  being  proved  that  our  dogs,  horses,  cattle,  and  other  domestic  animals, 
are  of  common  origin.     The  reader  is  referred  to  "Types  of  Mankind"  and  the  Appendix 


CLIMATE     AND     DISEASES    ON     MAN.  363 

In  considering  the  climates  of  the  Tropics  and  the  adjacent  warm 
climates,  it  is  necessary  to  divide  Medical  Climate  into  non-malarial 
and  malarial.  By  a  non-malarial  climate,  we  wish  to  designate 
one  which  is  characterized  by  temperature,  moisture  or  dryness, 
greater  or  less  changeableness,  &c. ;  in  short,  all  the  characteristics 
of  what  is  understood  by  the  word  "climate,"  independently  of  local 
morbific  influences.  By  malarial  climates,  we  mean  those  in  which 
malarial  emanations  are  superadded  to  the  above  conditions.  The 
two  climates  are  familiar  to  every  one,  and  often  exist  withiu  a  mile 
of  each  other.  In  our  Southern  States,  we  have  our  high  healthy 
"pine  or  sand-hills,"  bordering  the  rich  alluvial  lands  of  our  rivers. 
On  the  low  lands,  in  many  places,  the  most  deadly  malarial  fevers 
prevail  in  summer  and  autumn,  while  in  the  sandy  lands  there  is  an 
entire  exemption  from  all  diseases  of  this  class ;  and  our  cotton 
planters  every  summer  seek  these  retreats  for  health.  Not  only  in 
these  more  temperate  regions  of  the  United  States  is  this  proximity 
of  the  two  climates  observed,  but  also  in  Bengal  and  other  parts  of 
India,  in  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  at  Cape  Colony,  the  West 
India  islands,  &c.  Mobile  and  its  vicinity  afford  as  good  an  illus- 
tration of  these  climates  as  can  be  desired.  This  town  is  situated 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Mobile  river,  in  latitude  30°  40"  north,  on  the 
margin  of  a  plain,  that  extends  five  miles  to  the  foot  of  the  sand- 
hills, and  which  is  interspersed  with  ravines  and  marshes.  The 
sand-hills  rise  to  the  height  of  from  one  to  three  hundred  feet,  and 
extend  many  miles.  Now  the  thermometer,  barometer,  and  hygro- 
meter, indicate  no  appreciable  difference  in  the  climates  of  the  hills 
and  the  plain,  except  that  the  latter  is  rather  more  damp ;  and  yet 
the  two  localities  differ  immensely  in  point  of  salubrity.  Let  us 
suppose  that  a  thousand  inhabitants  of  Great  Britain  or  Germany 
should  be  landed  at  Mobile  about  the  month  of  May,  and  one-third 
placed  on  the  hills,  one-third  in  the  town,  and  the  remainder  in  the 
fenny  lands  around  the  latter,  and  ask  what  would  be  the  result  at 
the  end  of  six  months.  The  first  third  would  complain  much  of 
heat,  would  perspire  enormously,  become  enervated ;  but  no  one 
would  perhaps  be  seriously  sick,  and  probably  none  would  die  from 
the  effects  of  the  climate.  The  second  third,  or  those  in  the  city, 
if  it  happened  to  be  a  year  of  epidemic  yellow  fever,  would,  to  say 
the  least,  be  decimated,  or  even  one-half  might  die,  while  the  resi- 
dent acclimated  population  were  enjoying  perfect  health.  The  re- 
maining portion,  or  those  in  the  fenny  district,  would  escape  yellow 
fever,  but  would,  most  of  them,  be  attacked  with  intermittent  and 

of  "Moral  and  Intellectual  Diversity  of  Races" — in   Hotz's  translation  of  De   Gobineau, 
(Philadelphia,  1855) — for  a  fnll  examination  of  this  point. 


364       acclimation;   or,   the   influence   of 

remittent  fevers,  bowel  affections,  and  all  forms  of  malarial  or  marsh 
diseases :  fewer  would  die  than  of  those  in  the  city,  hut  a  large 
proportion  would  come  out  with  broken-down  constitutions.  Yellow 
fever  sometimes  extends  for  two  or  three  miles  around  the  city ;  but 
if  it  does,  it  always  commences  in  the  latter.  Here,  then,  we  have 
three  distinct  medical  climates  actually  within  sight  of  each  other. 
This  is  by  no  means  a  peculiarity  of  one  locality,  but  thousands  of 
similar  examples  may  be  cited  in  warm  climates.  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  its  suburbs,  and  Sullivan's  Island,  in  the  harbor  near  the 
city,  give  us  another  example  quite  as  pertinent  as  that  of  Mobile. 
In  our  cotton-growing  States,  the  malarial  climate  is  by  no  means 
confined  to  the  low  and  marshy  districts ;  on  the  contrary,  in  the 
high,  undulating  lands  throughout  this  extensive  region,  wherever 
there  is  fertility  of  soil,  the  population  is  subjected  more  or  less  to 
malarial  diseases.  These  remarks  apply,  as  will  be  seen  further  on, 
more  particularly  to  the  white  population,  the  negroes  being  com- 
paratively exempt  from  all  the  endemic  diseases  of  the  South.9  The 
tropical  climate  of  Africa,  so  far  as  known  to  us,  differs  widely  from 
the  same  parallels  in  other  parts  of  the  globe :  it  has  no  won-malarial 
climate.  Dr.  Livingstone  "has  been  struck  down  by  African  fever 
upwards  of  thirty  times,"  in  sixteen  years.10 

But  let  us  go  a  little  more  into  details,  and  examine  a  few  of  the 
races  of  man,  in  connection  with  non-malarial  climates.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  the  most  migrating  and  colonizing  race  of  the  present  day, 
and  may  be  selected  for  illustration.  Place  an  Englishman  in  the 
most  healthful  part  of  Bengal  or  Jamaica,  where  malarial  fevers  are 
unknown,  and  although  he  may  be  subjected  to  no  attack  of  acute 
disease,  may,  as  we  are  told,  become  acclimated,  and  may  live  with  a 
tolerable  degree  of  health  his  threescore  and  ten  years ;  yet,  he  soon 
ceases  to  be  the  same  individual,  and  his  descendants  degenerate. 
He  complains  bitterly  of  the  heat,  becomes  tanned;  his  plump, 
plethoric  frame  is  attenuated ;  his  blood  loses  fibrine  and  red  globules ; 
both  body  and  mind  become  sluggish ;  gray  hairs  and  other  marks 
of  premature  age  appear  —  a  man  of  40  looks  fifty  years  old  —  the 
average  duration  of  life  is  shortened  (as  shown  by  life-insurance 
tables);  and  the  race  in  time  would  be  exterminated,  if  cut  off  from 
fresh  supplies  of  immigrants.     The  same  facts  hold  in  our  Southern 


9  A  medical  friend  (Dr.  Gordon)  who  has  had  much  experience  in  the  diseases  of  the 
interior  of  Alabama,  South  Carolina,  and  Louisiana,  has  been  so  kind  as  to  look  over  these 
sheets  for  me,  and  assures  me  that  I  have  used  language  much  too  strong  with  regard  to 
the  exemption  of  negroes.  He  says  they  are  quite  as  liable  as  the  whites,  according  to  his 
observations,  to  intermittents  and  dysentery. 

10  "London  Chronicle,"  Dec.  15,  1856. 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  365 

States,  though  in  a  less  degree ;  and  the  effect  is  in  proportion  to  the 
high  range  of  temperature.  We  here  have  short  winters,  which  do 
not  exist  in  the  Tropics ;  and  the  wear  and  tear  of  long  summers 
are  by  them,  to  a  great  extent,  counterbalanced.  The  English  army 
surgeons  tell  us  that  Englishmen  do  not  become  acclimated  in  India: 
length  of  residence  affords  no  immunity,  but,  on  the  contrary,  the 
mortality  among  officers  and  troops  is  greatest  among  those  who 
remain  longest  in  the  climate.11 

Tbere  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  can  ever  be 
transformed  into  a  Hindoo.  We  have  already  given  reasons  why 
Jews  become  acclimated,  in  hot  latitudes,  with  more  facility  than 
races  further  north;  but  even  these  cannot  be  changed  from  their 
original  type  by  ages  of  residence  in  foreign  climes.  There  is  a 
little  colony  of  Jews  at  Cranganor,  in  Malabar,  near  Cochin,  who 
have  resided  there  more  than  1000  years,  and  who  have  preserved 
the  Jewish  type  unchanged.  There  is  in  the  same  neighborhood  a 
settlement  of  what  are  called  black  Jews,  but  who  are  of  Hindoo 
blood.12  Tbere  are  also  in  India  the  Parsees,  who  have  been  almost 
as  long  in  the  country  as  the  Jews,  and  still  do  not  approximate  to 
the  Hindoos  in  type.  Way,  more,  in  India  itself  we  see,  in  the 
different  castes,  the  most  opposite  complexions,  which  have  remained 
independent  of  climate  several  thousand  years.  Unlike  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  the  Jews  seem  to  bear  up  well  against  that  climate. 

The  colonists  of  warm  countries  nowhere  present  the  same  vigoi 
of  constitution  as  the  population  of  Great  Britain  or  Germany;  and 
although  they  may  escape  attacks  of  fever,  they  are  annoyed  by 
many  minor  ills,  which  make  them  a  physic-taking  and  shorter-lived 
people.  Knox  asserts  that  the  Germanic  races  would  die  out  in 
America  if  left  alone ;  and  though  I  am  not  disposed  to  go  to  his 
extremes,  I  do  not  believe  that  even  our  3sTew  England  States  are  so 
well  adapted  to  those  races  as  the  temperate  zone  of  Europe,  from 
which  history  derives  them. 

There  is,  unquestionably,  an  acclimation,  though  imperfect,  against 
moderately  high  temperature ;  and  it  is  equally  true,  that  persons 
who  have  gone  through  this  process,  and  more  especially  their 
children,  when  grown  up,  are  less  liable  to  violent  attacks  of  our 
marsh  fevers,  when  exposed  to  them,  than  fresh  immigrants  from 
the  north.  The  latter  are  more  plethoric,  their  systems  more  in- 
flammable ;  and  although  not  more  liable  to  be  attacked  by  these 
endemics  than  natives,  they  expeiience  them,  when  attacked,  in  a 

11  Johnson  on  Tropical  Climates,  London,  1841,  p.  56. 

12  See,  for  details,  "Types  of  Mankind"  by  Nott  &  Glidbon,  chapter  "Physical  History 
of  the  Jews." 


366      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

more  violent  and  dangerous  form.     The  latter  fact  holds  good  of 
yellow,  as  well  as  of  remittent  fever. 

Dr.  Boudin,  in  his  "Lettres  sur  l'Algerie,"  after  establishing  the 
persistent  influence  of  marsh  malaria  on  French  and  English  colo- 
nists, continues  thus : 

"Reste  a  examiner  1'influence  exercee  sur  le  chiffre  des  deces  par  le  sejour  dans  les 
locality  de  l'Algerie,  non  sujeltes  aux  emanations  paludeennes,  mais  se  distinguant  de  la 
France  uniquement  par  une  temperature  eievee.  A  deTaut  de  documents  assez  nombreux 
vecueillis  en  Algerie  meme,  nous  invoquerons  les  faits  relatifs  a,  deux  possessions  anglaises 
ayant  la  plus  grande  analogie  thermome'trique  avec  notre  possession  africaine;  nous  voulons 
parler:  1°,  du  Cap  de  Bonne-Esperance ;  2°,  de  Malte:  Tun  et  l'autre  proverbialement 
exempted  de  l'<jl6nient  paludeen. 

"Au  Cap  de  Bonne-Esperance,  la  mortality  de  trois  regiments  anglais,  de  1831  a  1830, 
a  ete  representee  par  les  nombres  suivants : 

En  1831 26  deces. 

"  1832 26 

"  1833 28 

"  1834 28 

"  1835 34 

"  1836 33 

"A  Malte,  oil  Ton  peut  considerer  les  hommes  les  plus  jeunes  comme  les  plus  recemment 
arrives  d'Angleterre,  la  proportion  des  deces  a  suivi  la  marche  ci-apres. 

Au-dessous  de  18  ans 10  deces  sur  1000  hommes. 

Del8a25 18.7  " 

"  25  a,  33 23.6  " 

"  33  a  40 29.5  " 

"  40  a  50 34.4  " 

"En  resume,  les  analogies  puisees,  non  seulement  dans  les  localites  paludeennes,  mais 
encore  dans  les  contrees  non  marecageuses,  ayant  une  plus  grande  analogie  climatologique 
avec  l'Algerie,  se  montrent  peu  favorable  a,  l'hypothese  de  l'acclimatment." 

He  then  goes  on  to  give  statistics  both  of  the  civil  and  military 
population  of  Algeria,  which  show  still  more  deadly  effects  of 
climate. 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  physical  history  of  the  Negro,  we  shall  find 
the  picture  completely  reversed.  He  is  the  native  of  the  hottest 
region  on  the  globe,  where  he  goes  naked  in  the  scorching  rays  of 
the  sun,  and  can  lie  down  and  sleep  on  the  ground  in  a  temperature 
of  at  least  150°  of  Fahrenheit,  where  the  white  man  would  die  in  a 
few  hours.  {And  while  the  degenerate  tropical  descendants  of  the 
whites  are  regenerated  by  transportation  to  cold  parallels  of  the 
temperate  zone,  experience  abundantly  proves  that,  in  America,  the 
Negro  steadily  deteriorates,  and  becomes  exterminated  north  of  about 
40°  north  latitude.  The  statistics  of  New  England,  New  York,  and 
Philadelphia,  abundantly  prove  this.  The  mortality  of  blacks  in 
our  Northern  States  averages  about  double  that  of  the  whites ;  and 
although  their  natural  improvidence  and  social  condition  may,  and 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON    MAN.  367 

do,  have  an  influence  on  this  result,  still,  no  one  conversant  with 
the  facts  will  deny  the  baneful  influence  of  cold  upon  the  race.    ' 

/It  is  evident,  then,  that  the  white  and  black  races  differ,  at  the 
present  day,  as, much  in  their  physiological  as  they  do  in  their  phy- 
sical characters7;  and  until  their  actual  characteristics  are  changed, 
it"  cannot  be  expected  that  their  normal  geographical  range  will  be 
enlarged.  The  respective  types  which  they  now  present,  antedate 
all  human,  written,  or  monumental  records,  and  will  only  disappear 
with  the  other  typical  forms  of  our  Fauna. 

We  may  here  refer  to  another  curious  train  of  facts,  in  connection 
with  the  adaptability  of  the  above  races  to  climate.  "We  allude  to 
the  results  of  crossing  or  breeding  them  together,  which  seem  best 
explained  by  the  laws  of  hybridity.  The  mulattoes,  no  matter 
where  born,  north  or  south,  possess  characteristics,  in  reference  to 
medical  climate,  intermediate  between  the  pure  races.  The  mulat- 
toes brought  from  Maryland  or  Virginia  to  Mobile  or  ]STew  Orleans, 
suffer  infinitely  less  from  the  diseases  of  these  localities,  than  do  the 
pure  whites  of  the  same  States.  In  fact,  the  smallest  admixture  of 
negro  blood,  as  in  the  Quarteroon  or  Quinteroon,  is  a  great,  though 
not  absolute,  protection  against  yellow  fever.  "We  have,  in  the 
course  of  twenty  years'  professional  observations,  in  Mobile,  seen 
this  fact  fully  tested ;  and  it  is  conceded,  on  all  hands,  throughout 
the  South.  Previously  to  the  memorable  yellow  fever  epidemic  of 
1853,  we  never  saw  more  than  two  or  three  exceptions ;  and  although 
there  were  more  examples  in  that  year,  still,  the  mortality  was 
trifling  compared  with  that  of  the  pure  whites.  I  hazard  nothing  in 
the  assertion,  that  one-fourth  negro  blood  is  a  more  perfect  protec- 
tion against  yellow  fever,  than  is  vaccine  against  small-pox. 

The  subject  of  hybridity  has  been  very  imperfectly  understood 
until  the  last  few  years ;  and  to  the  late  Dr.  Morton  are  we  mainly 
indebted  for  the  advance  actually  made.  He  has  shown  that  there 
is  a  regular  gradation,  in  hybridity  among  species,  from  that  of 
perfect  sterility  to  perfect  prolificacy.  The  mulatto  would  seem  to 
fall  into  that  condition  of  hybrids,  where  they  continue  to  be  more 
or  less  prolific  for  a  few  generations,  but  with  a  constant  tendency 
to  run  out.  The  idea  is  prevalent  with  us,  that  mulattoes  are  less 
prolific  than  either  pure  race ;  suffer  much  from  tubercular  affec- 
tions ;  their  children  die  young ;  and  that  their  average  duration  of 
life  is  very  low.  That  all  this  is  true  of  the  cross  of  the  pure  whites 
and  blacks,  I  have  no  doubt ;  but  these  remarks  apply  with  less  force 
to  the  cross  of  Spaniards,  Portuguese,  and  other  dark  races,  with  the 
negro :  these  affiliate  much  better.  If  we  could  select  the  pure- 
blooded  races,  put  them  together,  and  continue  crossing  them  for 


368         ACCLIMATION;     OR,     THE     INFLUENCE     OF 

several  generations,  we  might  come  to  more  definite  conclusions 
with  regard  to  the  specific  proximity  of  races  ;  but  this  we  are  unable 
to  control ;  nor  has  sufficient  use  been  made  even  of  the  materials 
we  have  at  command.  Only  a  few  years  ago,  the  origin  of  the 
domestic  dog  was  a  subject  of  dispute,  and  many  naturalists  sup- 
posed it  to  be  derived  from  the  wolf;  but  M.  Flourens  has  been 
making  a  series  of  experiments,  in  the  Garden  of  Plants,  at  Paris, 
which  settles  this  part  of  the  discussion.  He  ascertained  that  the 
progeny  becomes  sterile  after  the  third  generation  ;  while  that  of  the 
dog  and  jackal  run  as  far  as  the  fourth  generation,  and  then  in  like 
manner  become  sterile.  These  are  important  discoveries  in  the 
history  of  hybridity,  and  show  how  erroneous  have  been  conclusions 
as  to  identity  of  species,  based  upon  prolificacy  of  offspring. 

There  is  reason,  as  above  stated,  to  believe  that  this  law  of  hy- 
bridity  applies  to  the  species  of  man ;  and  that  there  are  degrees  of 
fertility  in  the  offspring  of  different  types,  in  proportion  as  they  are 
similar  or  dissimilar.13 

Our  limits,  if  we  desired  to  do  so,  would  not  permit  a  more 
extended  examination  of  races,  in  connection  with  non-malarial 
climates ;  and  we  shall  therefore  pass  on  to  another  division  of  the 
subject.  The  whites  and  blacks  have  sufficiently  served  to  illustrate 
the  point ;  and  the  other  races  would  show  similar  effects,  in  various 
degrees.  Many  facts  bearing  on  other  races  will  be  brought  out  as 
we  progress. 

Malarial  Climates. — Under  this  head,  we  shall  introduce  facts  to 
prove  that  races  are  influenced  differently,  not  only  by  the  tempera- 
ture of  various  latitudes,  but  by  morbific  agents,  which,  to  a  certain 
extent,  are  independent  of  mere  temperature — viz.,  the  causes  of 
marsh  or  yellow  fevers,  typhoid  fever,  cholera,  plague,  &e.  Our 
illustrations  will  be  again  taken  mostly  from  the  white  and  black 
races,  because  they  afford  the  fullest  statistics,  and  because  the 
writer  has  been  professionally  engaged  with  these  races  for  more 
than  thirty  years,  and  is  familiar  with  the  peculiarities  of  both. 

"We  should  here  call  attention  to  a  striking  physiological  difference 
between  the  two  races.  It  was  a  remark  annually  made  by  the 
distinguished  Dr.  Chapman,  Professor  of  Practice  in  the  Pennsyl- 
vania University :  '{That  the  negro  is  much  less  subject  to  inflammatory 
diseases,  with  high  vascular  action,  than  the  whites,  and  rarely  bears 
blood-letting,  or  depletion  in  any  form;  and  even  in  pleurisy,  pneu- 
monia,  &c,   he   often  requires   stimulants   instead   of  depletants." 

13  For  a  full  discussion  of  the  question  of  hybridity,  see  Nott  &  Gliddon's  "  Types  of 
Mankind"  pp.  372-410:  —  and  also  the  Appendix,  by  J.  C.  Nott,  to  Hotz's  Gobineau,  pp 
489-504. 


CLIMATE    AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  3G9 

The  remark  is  unquestionably  true;  and  will  be  vouched  for  by 
every  experienced  physician  North  and  South.  I  have  had  under 
ray  charge,  for  some  years,  a  private  infirmary,  devoted  to  negroes  ; 
in  which  are  annually  received  a  large  number  of  negro  laborers, 
and  most  of  them  from  our  city  cotton-presses  and  steamboats, 
where  none  but  the  most  athletic  are  employed.  When  seized  with 
pneumonia,  pleurisy,  and  other  acute  diseases  of  winter  (to  say 
nothing  of  summer  affections),  they  almost  invariably  come  in  with 
feeble  pulse,  cool  skin,  unstrung  muscles,  and  all  the  symptoms  of 
prostration ;  and  require  to  be  treated  mainly  with  revulsives,  qui- 
nine, and  stimulants.  This  I  remarked  also  in  Philadelphia,  when 
a  resident  student  at  the  Almshouse ;  and  all  the  medical  writers  of 
the  South  sustain  me.  The  negro,  too,  always  suffers  more  than 
whites  from  cholera,  typhoid  fever,14  plague,  small-pox,  and  all  those 
diseases  arising  from  morbid  poisons,  that  have  a  tendency  to  de- 
press the  powers  of  life,  with  the  exception  of  marsh  and  yellow 
fevers — to  which,  we  shall  see,  he  is  infinitely  less  liable.  The 
planters  of  the  South  look  with  terror  to  the  appearance  of  cholera 
or  typhoid  diseases  among  their  negroes;  and  whether  these  be 
natives  of  the  extreme  South,  or  recently  brought  from  the  colder 
and  more  salubrious  regions  of  Maryland  and  Virginia,  it  matters 
not :  the  susceptibility  belongs  to  the  race,  and  is  little  influenced  by 
place  of  birth. 

The  strictly  white  races  reach  their  highest  physical  and  intellec- 
tual development,  as  well  as  most  perfect  health  and  greatest  average 
duration  of  life,  above  latitude  40°  m  the  Western,  and  45°  in  the 
Eastern  Hemisphere ;  and  whenever  they  migrate  many  degrees 
below  these  lines,  they  begin  to  deteriorate  from  increased  tempera- 
ture, either  alone,  or  combined  with  morbific  influences  incident  to 
climate.  On  the  continent  of  Europe,  there  has  been,  for  several 
thousand  years,  such  a  constant  flux  and  reflux  of  peoples,  from 
wars  and  migrations,  that  races  have  become  so  mingled,  from  the 
Mediterranean  to  the  Arctic,  as  to  render  it  impossible  now  to 
unravel  this  human  maze,  and  to  give  its  proper  value  to  each 
indigenous  race,  of  which  we  believe  there  were  many.  We  must, 
therefore,  take  them  in  masses  or  groups ;  and,  in  speaking  of  white 
I'aces,  we  shall  draw  our  illustrations  mostly  from  Anglo-Saxons, 
Celts,  and  Germans,  which  are  so  nearly  allied,  and  so  like  in  tem- 
perament, as  to  answer  sufficiently  well  our  present  wants.  They, 
too,  have  been   widely  scattered   through   foreign   climates;    and, 

14  Dr.  Boudin,  in  his  "Pathologic  OomparSe."  gives  abundant  proof  of  the  liability  of 
negroes  to  typhoid  fever,  consumption,  and  cholera,  in  the  Tropics  and  in  the  Old  World. 

24 


370        ACCLIMATTON;    OR,     THE    INFLUENCE    OF 

thanks  to  their  intelligence,  have  furnished  us  with  reliable  statis- 
tics. There  are  many  races  in  Europe  that,  according  to  our  view, 
cannot  strictly  be  included  with  the  above  class,  viz.,  the  dark- 
skinned  Iberians,  the  Spaniards,  Portuguese,  Italians,  and  others. 

Let  us  next  inquire  what  real  progress  has  been  made  towards  the 
acclimation  of  white  races  in  tropical  climates.  Although  we  have 
writings  in  abundance  on  the  subject,  they  are  mostly  vague  and 
unsatisfactory ;  and  even  a  precise  definition  of  the  term  is  wanting. 
All  we  can  hope,  within  our  limits,  is  to  lay  out  some  land-marks, 
which  may  stimulate  others  to  greater  detail. 

Dr.  Rochoux  has  attempted  a  somewhat  precise  definition  of  the 
term  acclimation;  and  perhaps  a  better  one  cannot  be  given  in  the 
present  state  of  knowledge.  He  says:  "Acclimation  is  a  profound 
change  in  the  organism,  produced  by  a  prolonged  sojourn  in  a  place 
whose  climate  is  widely  different  from  that  to  which  one  is  accus- 
tomed ;  and  which  has  the  effect  of  rendering  the  individual  who 
has  been  subjected  to  it  similar,  in  many  respects,  to  the  natives 
[indigenes)  of  the  country  which  he  has  adopted." 

This  definition  strikes  at  once  a  leading  difficulty  in  this  discus- 
sion, and  one  which  should,  as  far  as  possible,  be  cleared  away, 
before  we  can  fully  estimate  the  influence  of  climate  on  mankind. 
Who  are  these  " indigenes"  of  whom  Rochoux  speaks?  Are  they, 
in  all  cases,  really  descendants  of  the  same  original  stock  as  those 
who  come  to  seek  acclimation  ?  Here,  I  repeat,  are  questions  that 
have  not  been  fully  nor  fairly  examined,  even  by  Prichard,  the  great 
champion  of  the  unity  of  the  human  race ;  and  which  embarrass 
our  progress  at  every  step. 

Dr.  Prichard  remarks :  "  It  is  well  known  that  the  proportional 
number  of  individuals  who  attain  a  given  age,  differs  in  different 
climates ;  and  that  the  warmer  the  climate,  other  circumstances 
being  equal,  so  much  the  shorter  is  the  average  duration  of  human 
life.  Even  within  the  limits  of  Europe,  the  difference  is  very  great. 
In  some  instances,  according  to  the  calculations  of  M.  Moreau  de 
Jonnes,  the  rate  of  mortality,  and  inversely  the  duration  of  life, 
differ  by  nearly  one-half  from  the  proportions  discovered  in  other 
examples.  The  following  is  a  brief  extract  from  a  table  presented 
by  this  celebrated  calculator  of  the  Institute : 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON    MAN.  371 

"  TABLE  EXHIBITING  THE  ANNUAL  MORTALITY  IN  DIFFERENT  COUNTRIES  IN 

EUROPE. 

In  Sweden from  1821  to  1825 ,  1  death  in  45 

Denmark "  1819 "  45 

Germany "  1825 "  45 

Prussia "  1821  to  1824 "  39 

Austrian  Empire "  1825  to  1830 "  43 

Holland "  1824 "  40 

GreatBritain "  1800  to  1804 "  47 

France "  1825  to  1827 "  39.5 

Canton  deVaud "  1824 "  47 

Lombardy "  1827  to  1828 "  31 

Roman  States "  1820 "  28 

Scotland , "  1821 "  50 

"The  difference  of  twenty-eight  and  fifty  is  considerable;  but  even  the  latter  rate  of 
mortality  is  considerably  greater  than  that  which  the  data  collected  by  M.  Moreau  de 
Jonnes  attribute  to  Iceland,  Norway,  and  the  northern  parts  of  Scotland. 

"  In  approaching  the  equator,  we  find  the  mortality  increase,  and  the  average  duration 
of  life  consequently  diminish.  The  following  calculation,  obtained  by  the  same  writer, 
sufficiently  illustrates  this  remark : 

LATITUDE.  PLACES.  ONE  DEATH  IN 

6°  10' Batavia 26  inhabitants. 

10°  10' Trinidad 27  " 

13°  54' Sainte  Lucie 27  " 

14°  44' Martinique  28  " 

15°  59' Guadaloupe 27  " 

18°  36' Bombay 20  " 

22°  33' Calcutta 20  " 

23°  11' Havana 33  " 

"It  has  been  observed  that,  in  some  of  these  instances,  the  rate  of  mortality  appears 
greater  than  that  which  properly  belongs  to  the  climate ;  as  some  of  the  countries  men- 
tioned include  cities  and  districts  known  to  be,  by  local  situation,  extremely  unhealthy.16 
In  some,  the  mortality  belongs,  in  great  part,  to  strangers,  principally  Europeans,  who, 
coming  from  a  different  climate,  suffer  in  great  numbers.  The  separate  division  from 
which  the  collective  numbers  above  given  are  deduced,  will  sufficiently  indicate  these 
circumstances. 

In  Batavia,  1805 Europeans  died 1  in  11 

"  Slaves 1  "  13 

"  Chinese 1  "  29 

"  Javanese,  viz.,  Natives 1  "  40 

Calcutta,  1817  to  1836 Europeans  and  Eurasians 1  "  28 

"  Portuguese  and  French 1  "  8 

1822  to  1836 Western  Mahommedansl 

Bengal 

"  Moguls 

"  Arabs 

15  A  striking  proof  of  the  difference  between  a  malarial  and  non-malarial  climate,  in 
close  proximity. — J.  C.  N. 


372      acclimation;    or,    the   influence  of 


lin!6 


Calcutta,  1822  to  1836 Western  Hindus  died...." 

"  Bengal  Hindus 

"  Low  Castes 

"  Mugs \ 

Bombay,  1815 Europeans 1  "  18.5 

"  Mussulmans 1  "  17.5 

"  Parsees 1  "  40 

Guadaloupe,  1811  to  1824 Whites 1  "22 

"  Free  men  of  color 1  "  35 

Martinique,  1825 .' Whites 1  "  24 

"  Free  men  of  color. 1  "  23 

Granada,  1815 Slaves 1  "22 

In  Saint  Lucia,  1802 Slaves 1  "  20 

"The  comparatively  low  degree  of  mortality  among  the  free  men  of  color,  in  the  West 
Indies,  and  the  Javanese  and  Parsees,  in  countries  where  those  races  are  either  the  original 
inhabitants,  or  have  become  naturalized  by  an  abode  of  some  centuries,  is  remarkable,  in 
the  preceding  table.  It  would  seem  that  such  persons  are  exempted,  in  a  great  measure, 
from  the  influence  of  morbific  causes,  which  destroy  Europeans  and  other  foreigners. 
That  the  Tate  of  mortality  should  be  lower  among  them  than  in  the  southern  parts  of  Europe,  is 
a  fact  which,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  it  is  difficult  to  explain."16 

It  appears,  from  these  tables,  which  are  corroborated  by  all 
subsequent  statistics  of  tbe  above-named  countries,  as  well  as  those 
of  the  United  States,  that  the  whites  show  the  greatest  average 
duration  of  life  in  temperate  latitudes.  Russia,  it  seems,  gives  a 
higher  rate  of  mortality  than  any  cold  climate  short  of  the  Arctic 
(of  which  we  want  statistics) ;  and  why  the  great  difference  of  mor- 
tality in  several  of  these  countries,  differing  apparently  so  little  in 
climate,  it  is  impossible,  in  the  present  state  of  knowledge,  to  deter- 
mine. It  is,  probably,  in  many  instances,  attributable  to  habits  and 
social  condition.  In  Russia,  where  the  mortality  is  so  great,  it 
perhaps  may  be  explained  by  a  combination  of  causes — such  as  the 
extreme  rigor  of  the  climate,  the  oppressed  condition  of  the  serfs, 
their  bad  habits  and  improvidence,  and  last,  though  not  least,  the 
immigration  and  interblending  of  races  foreign  to  the  climate.  In 
Norway,  the  mortality  is  put  down  at  1  in  54,  or  one-half  that  of 
Russia. 

The  Germanic  races  we  know  to  be  among  the  most  hardy  and 
robust  of  the  human  family,  by  nature ;  and  yet,  as  we  see  them 
(mostly  of  the  poorer  classes),  in  our  Southern  States,  they  are,  in 
general,  a  squalid-looking  people.  I  can  assign  no  other  cause  than 
their  mode  of  life— with  which,  in  Germany,  I  am  not  familiar.  Their 
mode  of  sleeping,  in  America,  is  very  destructive  of  health :  they  live 
in  confined  rooms,  and  lie  at  night  between  two  feather-beds,  even  in 
our  mild  climate.  It  is  impossible  that  any  people  can  be  healthy 
with  such  customs;  and  if  a  strict  scrutiny  were  made  into  the  habits 

16  "  Physical  History  of  Mankind,  I,  pp.  116-17-18. 


CLIMATE    AND    DISEASES    ON    MAN.  373 

of  many  of  the  populations  above-named,  it  is  not  improbable  that 
mucb  of  the  discrepancy  in  their  vital  statistics  would  be  explained 
by  condition  and  habits,  skill  of  the  medical  profession,  &c.17 

When  we  come  down  to  the  Roman  States,  the  mortality  rises  to 
1  in  28,  which  is  easily  explained :  there  begin  the  malarial  climates : 
and  we  shall  see  that  the  mortality  among  whites  increases  onwards 
to  the  Tropics.  But  Prichard  makes  one  fundamental  mistake  :  he 
never  stops  to  ask  a  question  about  the  adaptation  of  race  to  climate, 
but  follows  out  his  foregone  conclusion,  and  goes  on  to  show  that, 
"in  approaching  the  equator,  the  mortality  increases,  and  the  ave- 
rage duration  of  life  consequently  diminishes ;"  illustrating  it  by 
the  second  table,  beginning  with  Batavia.  He  is  much  embar- 
rassed to'  account  for  the  "low  degree  of  mortality  among  the  free 
men  of  color  in  the  "West  Indies,  the  Javanese  and  Parsees ;"  and 
for  a  reason  why  "the  rate  of  mortality  should  be  lower  among 
them,  than  in  the  southern  parts  of  Europe"? 

Now,  the  reason  is  obvious:  the  blacks,  Parsees,  and  Javanese, 
are  all  autochthons  of  hot  climates,  and  were  created  to  suit  the 
conditions  in  which  they  have  been  placed,  as  well  as  all  similar 
ones.  The  Parsees,  like  the  Jews,  were  from  a  warm  latitude  ori- 
ginally, and  soon  become  acclimated;  but  the  Anglo-Saxon,  and 
kindred  races,  never  thrive  and  never  will  prosper  in  such  climates. 
Even  in  Italy,  the  white  races  die,  when  a  negro  might  live,  or  a 
coolie  would  nourish.  The  same  remarks  apply  to  the  Chinese,  the 
Mahomedans,  Moguls,  and  Arabs,  in  the  last  table :  all  are  from  hot 
climates,  and  prosper  in  Calcutta. 

The  greater  mortality  among  the  Hindus,  compared  with  the 
Mussulmans,  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  Hindus  of  Calcutta- 
consist  of  families  including  a  large  proportion  of  infant  life.  The 
same  circumstance  explains  the  mortality  of  the  Portuguese,  who 
are  also  a  wretched  and  suffering  class.18  The  French  (but  160)  are 
included  with  3181  Portuguese ;  and  the  statement  is  worth  nothing, 
so  far  as  the  former  are  concerned. 

"  The  native  troops  on  the  Bengal  establishment,"  eays  Captain  Henderson  (Asiatic 
Researches,  vol.  20,  part  I.),  "  are  particularly  healthy,  under  ordinary  circumstances. 

"It  has  been  found,  by  a  late  inquiry,  embracing  a  period  of  five  years,  that  only  one 
man  is  reported  to  have  died  per  annum,  out  of  every  hundred  and  thirty-one  of  the  actual 

11  While  writing  this,  I  meet  with  a  very  intelligent  Prussian  gentleman,  who  informs  me 
that  this  mode  of  sleeping  between  feather-beds  is  common  throughout  the  Germanic  States, 
as  well  as  in  Russia,  among  the  peasantry,  and  middle  and  lower  classes  generally.  Such 
manner  of  sleeping  precludes  the  possibility  of  regulating  the  covering  to  temperature. 
The  system  must  be  often  greatly  and  injuriously  overheated,  and  rendered  more  suscept- 
ible to  the  intense  cold  of  their  own  climates,  when  exposed. 

18  Johnson  &  Martin's  "Influence  of  Tropical  Climates,"  London,  1841,  p.  50. 


374      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

strength  of  the  army.  So  injurious,  however,  is  Bengal  proper  to  this  class  of  natives,  in 
comparison  with  the  upper  provinces,  that,  although  only  one-fourth  of  the  troops  exhibited 
are  stationed  in  Bengal,  the  deaths  of  that  fourth  are  more  than  a  moiety  of  the  whole 
mortality  reported." 

Now,  according  to  this  statement,  the  native  troops  in  the  interior 
show  a  degree  of  healthfulness  (1  death  in  131)  unknown  to  any 
troops  in  Europe;  and  even  in  Bengal,  the  mortality,  as  stated  above, 
would  only  be  about  16  to  the  1000,  or  about  1  in  60  ! ! ! 

The  most  minute  and  reliable  statistics  we  possess,  touching  the 
influence  of  tropical  climates  on  the  European  races,  are  drawn  from 
the  reports  of  the  British  army  surgeons,  which  give  a  truly  melan- 
choly picture  of  the  sacrifice  of  human  life.  ¥e  shall  use  freely 
one  of  these  reports,  made  by  Major  Tulloch,  in  1840 — an  abstract 
of  which  may  be  found  in  the  April  Wo.  of  the  Medico-Chirurgical 
Review  of  that  year.  This  report  includes  the  stations  of  Western 
Africa,  St.  Helena,  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  the  Mauritius. 
The  following  statement  refers  to  Sierra  Leone  : 

"  From  a  table  furnished  by  Major  Tulloch,  it  appears  that,  during  so  long  a  period  as 
eighteen  years,  the  admissions  have  averaged  2978,  and  the  deaths  483  per  thousand  of 
the  strength ;  in  other  words,  every  soldier  was  thrice  under  medical  treatment,  and  nearly 
half  the  force  perished  annually:  indeed,  in  1825,  and  again  in  1820,  when  the  mortality 
was  at  its  height,  three-fourths  of  the  force  was  cut  off.  Yet  this  estimate  excludes  acci- 
dents, violence,  &c. 

"A  considerable  portion  of  the  deaths  in  1825-6  took  place  at  the  Gambia,  which  proved 
the  grave  of  almost  every  European  sent  there.  Had  the  mortality  of  each  station  been 
kept  distinct,  that  of  the  European  troops  at  Sierra  Leone  would  not  probably  have  exceeded 
350  per  thousand,  or  rather  more  than  a  third  of  the  garrison,  annually. 

"However  much  the  vice  and  intemperance,  not  only  of  the  troops,  but  the  other  classes 
of  white  population,  may  have  aggravated  the  mortality,  a  more  regulated  life  and  purer 
morals  brought  no  safety  to  them.     For,  among  the  Missionaries,  we  find  that: 

Of  89  who  arrived  between  March,  1804,  and  August,  1825,  all  men  in  the  prime 

of  life,  there  died 54 

Returned  to  England,  in  bad  health 14 

"  good  health 7 

Remained  on  the  coast 14 

Total 89" 

During  the  year  1825,  about  300  white  troops  were  landed  at 
different  times,  and  in  detachments :  nearly  every  one  died,  or  was 
shattered  in  constitution;  and,  what  is  remarkable,  "During  the 
whole  of  this  dreadful  mortality,  a  detachment  of  from  40  to  50  black 
soldiers  of  the  2d  West-India  Regiment  only  lost  one  man,  and  had 
seldom  any  in  the  hospital."  These  black  soldiers,  too,  had  been  born 
and  brought  up  in  the  "West  Indies  ;  and,  according  to  the  commonly 
received  theory  of  acclimation,  should  not  have  enjoyed  this  exemp- 
tion.    No  length  of  residence  acclimates  the  whites  in  Africa ;  on 


CLIMATE    AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  375 

the  contrary,  it  exterminates  them.     The  history  of  the  whole  coast 
is  the  same. 

The  Major's  report  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  black  troops,  recruited 
from  among  the  negroes  captured  from  slavers,  and  liberated  at 
Sierra  Leone.  It  is  remarkable  that  these  black  troops,  recruited 
from  native  Africans,  give  a  mortality,  during  eighteen  years,  of  an 
average  of  30  per  1000 — twice  as  high  as  the  mortality  of  other 
troops  serving  in  their  native  country.  This  rate  of  mortality  is 
about  the  same  as  that  of  the  black  troops  in  Jamaica  and  Hondu- 
ras. *  *  *  It  is  not,  however,  from  fever  (the  disease  of  the  climate) 
that  the  black  soldier  suffers.  From  this  the  attacks  have  been  fewer, 
and  the  deaths  have  not  materially  exceeded  the  proportion  among  an 
equal  number  of  white  troops  in  the  United  Kingdom,  or  other  tempe- 
rate climates.  The  black  troops  suffer  much  more  from  fever  in  the 
West  Indies.     Small-pox  killed  many,  dracunculus,  &c. 

The  Cape  Colony  possesses  a  milder  climate,  is  free  from  malarial 
influences ;  and  the  troops,  both  white  and  native,  enjoy  remarkable 
exemption  from  disease  and  mortality.  Fevers  are  rare  and  mild. 
The  Hottentots,  like  other  black  races,  show  a  strong  tendency  to 
phthisis — far  greater  than  the  white  troops. 

The  Mauritius,  though  in  the  same  latitude  as  Jamaica,  is  more 
temperate,  and  far  more  salubrious.  The  British  troops  are  as 
exempt  from  disease  here  as  in  Great  Britain.  This  island  has  a 
population  of  about  90,000,  two-thirds  of  whom  are  colored;  and 
while  the  white  population  are  remarkably  healthy,  both  military 
and  civil,  the  negroes  die  in  as  great  a  proportion  as  in  the  "West 
Indies,  says  Major  Tulloch.  A  prolonged  residence  here,  from  heat 
of  the  climate,  is  unfavorable  to  longevity  of  whites. 

Seychelles. — "A  group  of  small  islands,  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  between  4°  and  5°  south 
latitude.  They  are  fifteen  in  number;  but  the  principal  one,  named  Mah<5,  in  which  a 
detachment  of  British  troops  is  stationed,  is  sixteen  miles  long,  and  from  three  to  four 
broad,  with  a  steep,  rugged,  granite  mountain  intersecting  it  longitudinally.  The  soil  of 
Mahe1  is  principally  a  reddish  clay,  mixed  with  sand :  and  is  watered  by  an  abundance  of 
small  rivulets.  The  weather  in  these  islands  is  described  as  being  clear,  dry,  and  extremely 
agreeable.  There  is  little  difference  in  the  seasons,  except  during  November,  December, 
and  January,  when  much  rain  falls,  with  occasional  light  squalls.  The  equality  of  the 
temperature  may  be  inferred,  when  we  state  that  the  maximum  of  temperature  throughout 
the  year  was  88°,  and  the  minimum  73°.  We  cannot,  therefore,  be  surprised  when  we  are 
told  that  the  total  population  of  the  principal  islands  in  the  group  amounted,  in  1825,  to 
582  whites,  323  free  people  of  color,  and  6058  slaves — all  of  whom  are  said  to  enjoy 
remarkably  good  health,  and  an  exemption  from  the  languor  and  debility  so  much  experi- 
enced in  other  tropical  climates.  Extreme  longevity  is  very  common  ;  and  affections  of  the 
lunys  almost  the  only  disease,  of  a  serious  character,  to  which  the  inhabitants  are  subject." 

The  British  troops  proved  very  sickly  here;  but  Major  Tulloch 
attributes  this  to  bad  diet  and  intemperance. 


376         ACCLIMATION;    OR,     THE    INFLUENCE    OF 

The  fact  is  so  glaring,  and  so  universally  admitted,  that  I  am 
really  at  a  loss  how  to  select  evidence  to  show  that  there  is  no  accli- 
mation against  the  endemic  fevers  of  our  rural  districts.  Is  it  not 
the  constant  theme  of  the  population  of  the  South,  how  they  can 
preserve  health  ?  and  do  not  all  prudent  persons,  who  can  afford  to 
do  so,  remove  in  the  summer  to  some  salubrious  locality,  in  the 
pine-lands  or  the  mountains  ?  Those  of  the  tenth  generation  are 
just  as  solicitous  on  the  subject  as  those  of  the  first.  Books  written 
at  the  North  talk  much  about  acclimation  at  the  South ;  but  we  here 
never  hear  it  alluded  to  out  of  the  yelloio-fever  cities.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  know  that  those  who  live  from  generation  to  generation  in 
malarial  districts  become  thoroughly  poisoned,  and  exhibit  the 
thousand  Protean  forms  of  disease  which  spring  from  this  insidious 
poison. 

I  have  been  the  examining  physician  to  several  life-insurance 
companies  for  many  years,  and  one  of  the  questions  now  asked  in 
many  of  the  policies  is,  "7s  the  party  acclimated?"  If  the  subject 
lives  in  one  of  our  southern  seaports,  where  yellow  fever  prevails, 
and  has  been  born  and  reared- there,  or  has  had  an  attack  of  yellow 
fever,  I  answer,  "Yes."  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  lives  in  the  coun- 
try, I  answer,  "No;"  because  there  is  no  acclimation  against  inter- 
mittent and  bilious  fever,  and  other  marsh  diseases.  Now,  I  ask  if 
there  is  an  experienced  and  observing  physician  at  the  South  who 
will  answer  differently?  An  attack  of  yellow  fever  does  not  protect 
against  marsh  fevers,  nor  vice  versd. 

The  acclimation  of  negroes,  even,  according  to  my  observation, 
has  been  put  in  too  strong  a  light.  Being  originally  natives  of  hot 
climates,  they  require  no  acclimation  to  temperature,  are  less  liable 
to  the  more  inflammatory  forms  of  malarial  fevers,  and  suffer  infi- 
nitely less  than  whites  from  yellow  fever :  they  never,  however,  as 
far  as  my  observation  extends,  become  proof  against  intermittents 
and  their  sequela?.  The  cotton  planters  throughout  the  South  will 
bear  witness,  that,  wherever  the  whites  are  attacked  with  intermit- 
tents, the  blacks  are  also  susceptible,  though  not  in  so  great  a 
degree.  My  observations  apply  to  the  region  of  country  removed 
from  the  rice  country.  We  shall  see,  further  on,  that  the  negroes 
of  the  rice-field  region  do  undergo  a  higher  degree  of  acclimation 
than  those  of  the  hilly  lands  of  the  interior.  I  know  many  planta- 
tions in  the  interior  of  Alabama,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Missis- 
sippi, and  Louisiana,  on  which  negroes  of  the  second  and  third 
generation  continue  to  suffer  from  these  malarial  diseases,  and  where 
gangs  of  negroes  do  not  increase. 

Dr.  Samuel  Forry,  in  his  valuable  work  on  the  climate  of  the 


CLIMATE     AND     DISEASES    ON     MAN.  377 

United  States,  has  investigated  fully  the  influence  of  our  southern 
climates  on  our  population,  and  uses  the  following  decided  language 
in  relation  to  the  whites : 

"  In  these  localities,  as  is  often  observed  in  the  tide-water  region  of  our  Southern  States, 
the  human  frame  is  weakly  constituted,  or  imperfectly  developed:  the  mortality  among 
children  is  very  great,  and  the  mean  duration  of  life  is  comparatively  short.  Along  the 
frontiers  of  Florida  and  the  southern  borders  of  Georgia,  as  witnessed  by  the  author,  as 
well  as  in  the  low  lands  of  the  Southern  States  generally,  may  be  seen  deplorable  examples 
of  the  physical,  and  perhaps  mental,  deterioration  induced  by  endemic  influences.  In 
earliest  infancy,  the  complexion  becomes  sallow,  and  the  eye  assumes  a  bilious  tint : 
advancing  towards  the  years  of  maturity,  the  growth  is  arrested,  the  limbs  become  atte- 
nuated, the  viscera  engorged,  &c." — P.  365. 

But,  leaving  our  own  country,  let  us  look  abroad  and  see  what  the 
history  of  other  nations  teaches. 

The  best-authenticated  examples,  perhaps,  anywhere  to  be  found 
on  record,  of  the  enduring  influence  of  marsh  malaria  on  a  race,  are 
in  the  Campagna,  Maremma,  Pontines,  and  other  insalubrious  locali- 
ties in  classic  Italy.  The  following  account  is  given  by  Dr.  James 
Johnson,  in  his  work  on  Change  of  Air ;  and  every  traveller  through 
Italy  can  vouch  for  its  fidelity : 

"  It  is  from  the  mountain  of  Viterbo  that  we  have  the  first  glimpse  of  the  wide-spread 
Campagna  di  Roma.  The  beautiful  little  lake  of  Vico  lies  under  our  feet,  its  sloping  banks 
cultivated  like  a  garden,  but  destitute  of  habitations,  on  account  of  the  deadly  malaria, 
which  no  culture  can  annihilate.  From  this  spot,  till  we  reach  the  desert,  the  features  of 
poverty  and  wretchedness  in  the  inhabitants  themselves,  as  well  as  in  everything  around 
them,  grow  rapidly  more  marked.  We  descend  from  Monti  Rose  upon  the  Campagna,  and, 
at  Baccano,  we  are  in  the  midst  of  it." 

After  describing  the  beauty  of  the  scenery,  and  its  luxuriaut 
vegetation,  he  continues : 

"  But  no  human  form  meets  the  eye,  except  the  gaunt  figure  of  the  herdsman,  muffled 
up  to  the  chin  in  his  dark  mantle,  with  his  gun  and  his  spear ;  his  broad  hat  slouched  over 
the  ferocious  and  scowling  countenance  of  a  brigand :  the  buffalo  which  he  guards  is  less 
repugnant  than  he.  As  for  the  shepherd,  Arcadia  forbid  that  I  should  attempt  his  descrip- 
tion! The  savage  of  the  wigwam  has  health  to  recommend  him.  As  we  approach  within 
ten  miles  of  Rome,  some  specks  of  cultivation  appear,  and  with  them  the  dire  effects  of 
malaria  on  the  human  frame.  Bloated  bellies,  distorted  features,  dark  yellow  complexions, 
livid  eyes  and  lips;  in  short,  all  the  symptoms  of  dropsy,  jaundice,  and  ague,  united  in 
their  persons.  That  this  deleterious  miasma  did  exist  in  the  Campagna  from  the  very  first 
foundation  of  Rome  down  to  the  present  moment,  there  can  be  little  doubt," 

He  then  goes  on  to  prove  the  fact,  from  the  writings  of  Cicero, 
Livy,  and  others ;  and  makes  it  clear  that  the  population  of  Italy 
are  no  nearer  being  acclimated  against  this  poison,  than  they  were 
two  thousand  years  ago. 

Sir  James  Johnson  makes  the  following  just  remarks,  which 
apply  equally  to  the  malarious  districts  of  our  country : 


378      acclimation;   oe,   the  influence  of 

"A  glance  at  the  inhabitants  of  malarious  countries  or  districts,  must  convince  even  the 
most  superficial  observer,  that  the  range  of  disorders  produced  by  the  poison  of  malaria  is 
very  extensive.  The  jaundiced  complexion,  the  tumid  abdomen,  the  stunted  growth,  the 
btupid  countenance,  the  shortened  life,  attest  that  habitual  exposure  to  malaria  saps  the 
energy  of  every  mental  and  bodily  function,  and  drags  its  victims  to  an  early  grave.  A 
moment's  reflection  must  show  us,  that  fever  and  ague,  two  of  the  most  prominent  features 
of  malarious  influence,  are  as  a  drop  of  water  in  the  ocean,  when  compared  with  the  other 
less  obtrusive,  but  more  dangerous,  maladies  that  silently,  but  effectually,  disorganize  the 
vital  structures  of  the  human  fabric,  under  the  operation  of  the  deleterious  and  invisible 
poison. 

"What  are  the  consequences?  Malarious  fevers;  or,  if  these  are  escaped,  the  founda- 
tion of  chronic  malarious  disorders  is  laid,  in  ample  provision  for  future  misery  and  suffer- 
ing. These  are  not  speculations,  but  facts.  Compare  the  range  of  human  existence,  as 
founded  on  the  decrement  of  human  life  in  Italy  and  England.  In  Rome,  a  twenty-fifth 
part  of  the  population  pays  the  debt  of  nature  annually.  In  Naples,  a  twenty-eighth  part 
dies.  In  London,  only  one  in  forty;  and  in  England  generally,  only  one  in  sixty  falls 
before  the  scythe  of  time,  or  the  ravages  of  disease." 

As  is  the  case  with  all  of  our  southern  seaports,  "the  suburbs  of 
Rome  are  more  exposed  to  malaria  than  the  city;  and  the  open 
squares  and  streets,  than  the  narrow  lanes  in  the  centre  of  the  me- 
tropolis." "  The  low,  crowded,  and  abominably  filthy  quarter  of 
the  Jews,  on  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  near  the  foot  of  the  capital, 
probably  owes  its  acknowledged  freedom  from  the  fatal  malaria  to 
its  sheltered  site  and  inconceivably  dense  population."  This  immu- 
nity may  arise,  at  least  in  part,  from  their  position  at  the  foot  of  the 
hill ;  for  there  is  no  exception  to  the  rule,  at  the  South,  that  a  resi- 
dence on  the  bank  of  a  river,  or  in  low  land,  is  less  affected  by 
malaria  than  the  hill  that  overlooks  it.  At  present,  the  fact  is 
inexplicable,  although  universally  admitted. 

We  will  here  add  some  interesting  facts,  from  the  writings  of  the 
distinguished  military  physician,  M.  le  Docteur  Boudin,  derived  from 
personal  observation,  during  long  residence  in  Algeria,  and  from 
official  government  documents. 

"On  the  81st  of  December,  1851,  the  indigenous  city  population  (of  Algeria)  amounted 
to  105,865  inhabitants,  of  whom  there  were: 

Mussulmans 81,829 

Negroes 3,488 

Jews  21,048 

"If  we  compare  this  census  with  that  of  the  year  1849,  the  following  facts  appear: 

"1.  By  a  comparison  of  births  and  deaths  in  the  official  tables,  the  Mussulman  popula- 
tion is  decreasing. 

"2.  The  negroes  have  decreased,  in  two  years,  689. 

"  3.  The  Jews,  during  the  same  time,  have  increased  2020. 

"The  mortality  among  the  European  population,  in  Algeria,  from  1842  to  1851,  has 
varied  from  44  to  105  out  of  every  1000;  and,  instead  of  diminishing  from  year  to  year, 
under  acclimation,  the  mortality  has  steadily  increased. 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  379 

Mortality  according  to  Nationality. 
"  Heretofore  we  have  given  the  mortality  of  the  European  population  taken  in  mass.  It 
is  understood  that  this  mortality  must  be  greatly  influenced  by  the  origin  of  the  different 
elements  of  the  population.  We  have  shown  that  the  half  of  the  European  population-  is 
composed  of  strangers  (other  than  French),  and  numbers  over  41,000  Spaniards,  and 
15,000  Italians  and  Maltese.  The  official  tables  give  the  following  mortality,  from  1847  to 
1851,  for  the  French  and  strangers  (Spaniards,  Italians,  and  Maltese) : 

Deaths  for  each  1000. 

Strangers.  French. 

1847 48.4  50.8 

1848 41.8  41.7 

1849 84.3  101.5 

1850 43.4  70.5 

1851 39.3  64.5" 

Thus,  on  the  one  side,  we  see  that  the  mortality  of  the  French 
greatly  exceeds  that  of  the  other  European  population ;  while,  on 
the  other,  in  1850  and  1851,  the  mortality  of  the  former  rises  to  a 
figure  three  times  greater  than  the  normal  mortality  of  France. 

Jewish  Population. 
The  official  tables  give  the  following  resume  of  the  mortality  of 
the  Jewish  population,  during  the  years  from  1844  to  1849  : 

1844 21.6  deaths  per  1,000. 

1845 36.1      " 

1847 31.5      " 

1848 23.4 

1849 56.9 

This  mortality  is  greatly  below  that  of  both  the  European  and 
Mussulman  population,  and  shows  the  difference  of  acclimation  in 
Jews  and  Frenchmen :  "Nulle  part  le  Juif  ne  nait,  ne  vit,  ne  meurt, 
comme  les  autres  hommes  au  milieu  desquels  il  habite.  C'est  la  un 
point  d'anthropologie  comparee  que  nous  avons  mis  hors  de  contes- 
tation, dans  plusieurs  publications." 

"According  to  the  last  tables  of  the  French  establishments  in 
Algeria,  the  total  number  of  births,  from  1830  to  1851,  have  been 
44,900,  and  that  of  the  deaths  62,768"  ! ! !  This  fact  applies  to  all 
the  provinces,  and  shows  that  the  climate  tends  to  the  extermination 
of  Europeans. 

The  official  statistics  also  show  that  the  Mussulman  (Moorisb) 
population  is  steadily  decreasing,  in  the  cities.  Dr.  Boudin  asks : 
"  Is  this  diminution  the  effect  of  want,  or  of  demoralization  ?  is  it 
to  be  explained  by  the  cessation  of  unions  between  the  native  women 
and  the  Turkish  soldiers  ?  or,  finally,  is  it  explained  by  that  myste- 
rious law,  in  virtue  of  which  inferior  races  seem  destined  to  disap- 
pear through  contact  with  superior  races  ?' ■ 


380      acclimation;    ok,   the  influence  of 

As  this  subject  of  home  acclimation  is  one  of  too  much  import- 
ance to  be  allowed  to  rest  on  the  opinion  of  any  one  individual,  I 
have  taken  the  liberty  of  writing  to  several  of  my  professional 
friends,  for  the  results  of  their  observations  in  different  localities 
and  States.  All  the  answers  received  confirm  fully  my  assertion, 
that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  can  never  be  acclimated  against  marsh 
malaria.  I  should  remark,  that  the  following  letters  were  written 
with  the  haste  of  private  correspondence,  and  not  with  the  idea  of 
publication.  The  first  letter  is  from  Dr.  Dickson,  the  distinguished 
Professor  of  Practice  in  the  Charleston  Medical  College. 

"Charleston,  May  16,  1856. 

"My  dear  Doctor. — I  hasten  to  reply  to  yours  of  the  9th  inst.,  received  by  yesterday's 
mail. 

"1.  'The  Anglo-Saxon  race  can  never  become  acclimated  against  the  impression  of 
intermittent  and  bilious  fevers,  'periodical,'  or  'malarious  fevers.'  On  the  contrary,  the 
people  living  in  our  low  country  grow  more  liable  to  attack  year  after  year,  and  generation 
after  generation. 

"We  get  rid  of  the  poison  in  some  places,  and  thus  extend  our  limits  of  residence;  but 
in  no  other  way.  Drainage,  the  formation  of  an  artificial  surface  on  the  ground,  and  other 
incidents  of  density  of  population — such  as  culinary  fires,  railroad  smokes,  and  the  like, 
aid  to  prevent  the  formation  of  malaria,  or  correct  it. 

"Boudin  [British  and  Foreign  Rev.,  Oct.  1849)  argues  against  the  possibility  of  such 
acclimation,  dwelling  upon  the  little  success  and  great  mortality  attending  the  colonization 
of  Algeria,  the  European  and  English  intrusion  into  Egypt  and  into  Hindostan. 

"The  French,  he  tells  us,  cannot  keep  up  their  number  in  Corsica.  In  the  West  Indies, 
the  white  soldier  is  twice  as  likely  to  die  as  the  black ;  in  Sierra  Leone,  sixteen  times  more 
likely ;  and  this  continues  permanently. 

"  In  Brtson's  Reports  on  the  Climate  and  Principal  Diseases  of  the  African  Station,  it  is 
affirmed  (p.  83)  that,  on  board  the  Atholl  (a  vessel  kept  some  time  on  the  station),  the  cases 
of  fever  have  recovered  much  more  slowly  than  formerly ;  so  that,  instead  of  its  being  an 
advantage  to  be  acclimated,  it  is  apprehended  that  it  will  be  quite  the  reverse,  as  the  system 
becomes  relaxed  and  debilitated  by  the  enervating  influence  of  the  climate. 

"'2.  Do  negroes  in  this  country  (rice-field)  ever  lose  their  susceptibility  to  those  dis- 
eases V  Yes,  in  very  great  measure,  if  not  absolutely.  If  they  remain  in  the  same  loca- 
lity, they  are  scarcely  subjects  of  attack.  I  use  cautious  language — too  cautious.  It  is 
my  full  belief  that  they  become  insusceptible  of  the  impression  of  the  cause  of  periodical, 
or  what  we  call  malarious,  fevers.  Who  ever  saw  a  negro  with  an  ague-cake  ?  I  certainly 
never  did.  Change  of  residence  begets  a  certain  but  very  moderate  degree  of  susceptibi- 
lity. If  a  house  negro  be  sent  to  a  rice-field,  he  may  be  attacked.  So,  in  shifting  along 
the  African  coast  from  place  to  place,  the  natives  of  one  locality  will  be  seized  by  fever 
sometimes  at  another.  Bryson  tells  us  that  Fernando  Po  is  so  terribly  insalubrious,  that 
negroes  brought  from  any  part  of  the  African  continent  are  always  sickly  there,  '  though  the 
natives  of  the  island  itself  appear  to  be  a  healthy  and  athletic  race  of  people.' 

"  The  same  author  tells  us  of  the  general  insusceptibility  of  the  particular  race  called 
Kroo-men,  all  along  the  coast.  This  class  of  people  are  therefore  very  useful  and  avail- 
able, being  hired  in  preference  to  others  on  board  the  cruisers. 

"3.  Negroes  increase  in  number  on  our  rice  plantations;  nay,  it  is  my  impression  that 
the  rate  of  increase  is  greater  than  on  the  less  malarial  cotton  plantations.  The  majority 
of  deaths  that  do  occur,  happen  in  winter  and  from  winter  diseases — few  dying  of  fever, 


CLIMATE    AND    DISEASES    ON"    MAN.  381 

none  or  almost  none  from  bilious,  intermittents,  or  remittents,  some  from  typhus  or  typhoid, 
or  '  typhous'  fever. 

******** 

"I  remain,  &c, 

"  Samuel  Henry  Dickson." 

There  is  an  interesting  fact  in  the  above  letter  to  me,  as  I  have  no 
experience  in  the  rice-field  country.  I  allude  to  the  acclimation  of 
negroes  in  these  flat  swarnp-lands,  and  their  increase.  As  far  as  my 
observation  goes,  the  hilly,  rich  clay-lands  of  the  interior  are,  with 
few  exceptions,  more  liable  to  malarial  fevers  than  the  swamp-lands 
on  the  water-courses.  The  hills  in  the  neighborhood  of  our  swamp- 
lands are  always  more  sickly  than  the  residences  which  are  on  the 
river  banks.  Professor  Dickson  says  that  the  rice-field  negroes 
increase  more  than  those  on  the  cotton  plantations.  Certainly, 
negroes  do  suffer  greatly  on  many  cotton  plantations  in  the  middle 
belt  of  the  Southern  States ;  and  I  have  seen  no  evidence  to  prove 
that  negroes  can,  in  this  region,  become  accustomed  to  the  marsh 
poison ;  and  my  observation  has  been  extensive  in  four  States.  A 
question  here  arises:  Is  there  any  difference  in  types  of  those 
malarial  fevers  which  originate  in  the  flat  tide-water  rice-lands,  and 
those  of  the  clay-hills,  or  marsh  fevers  of  the  interior  ?  I  am  inclined 
to  think  there  is. 

The  following  letter  is  from  my  friend  Dr.  ¥m.  M.  Boling,  of 
Montgomery,  Alabama,  who  has  had  much  experience  in  this  region, 
and  who  is  well  known  as  one  of  our  best  medical  writers. 

"  Montgomery,  Ala.,  May  17,  1856. 
"  Dear  Doctor. — Judging  from  my  own  observation,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  acclimation  to  miasmatic  localities ;  in  other  words,  that  neither  resi- 
dence in  a  miasmatic  locality,  nor  an  attack,  nor  even  repeated  attacks,  of  any  of  the 
various  shades  or  forms  of  miasmatic  fevers,  confer  any  power  of  resistance  to  what  we 
understand  by  the  miasmatic  poison — not  regarding  yellow  fever,  however,  as  belonging  to 
this  class  of  disease.  On  the  contrary,  one  attack,  it  seems  to  me,  instead  of  affording  an 
immunity  from,  rather  increases  the  tendency  or  predisposition  to  another.  It  would  be  no 
difficult  matter,  I  think,  to  obtain  histories  of  cases  of  persons  born,  and  continuing  to  live, 
in  miasmatic  localities,  who  have  been  subject  to  repeated  attacks  of  miasmatic  fevers, 
occasionally,  during  the  entire  course  of  their  lives — say  from  a  few  days  after  birth  to  a 
moderate  old  age — "from  the  cradle  to  the  grave."  We  do,  to  be  sure,  meet  with  persons 
who  have  resided  for  a  considerable  time  in  miasmatic  localities,  without  ever  having  had 
an  attack  of  any  of  the  forms  of  the  fever  in  question.  Such  instances  are  more  common, 
if  I  mistake  not,  among  persons  who  have  removed  from  a  healthy  into  a  miasmatic  loca- 
lity, than  among  such  as  may  have  been  born  and  reared  in  the  latter.  But  it  is  a  rare 
thing,  indeed,  according  to  my  observation,  to  meet  with  a  person,  residing  in  a  place 
where  miasmatic  diseases  are  rife,  who  has  had  one  attack  and  no  more. 

"Yours,  &c, 

"Wm.  M.  Boling." 

It  were  an  easy  task  to  multiply  evidence  to  the  same  effect ;  but 
what  has  already  been  said  should  be  sufficient  to  satisfy  any  think- 


382      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

ing  mind.19  "We  shall,  therefore,  leave  this  point,  and  turn  hack 
again  to  the  Report  of  Major  Tulloch,  where  we  find  some  interest- 
ing facts,  respecting  the  negro  race,  in  the  Mauritius,  which  will  not 
bear  curtailment. 

Black  Pioneers. — "These  military  laborers  have  been  enlisted  for  the  purpose  of  relieving 
the  European  soldiers  from  the  performance  of  fatigue  and  other  duties,  which  subjected 
them  to  much  exposure.  They  are  all  negroes,  who  have  either  been  born  in  the  Mauritius, 
or  brought  from  Madagascar  and  Mozambique,  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Africa.  They  are 
described  as  being  a  more  robust  and  athletic  race  than  those  composing  the  West  India 
regiments. 

"A  table  exhibits  the  admissions  into  hospital  and  deaths  among  these  troops  since  1825. 
As  regards  both,  the  ratio  is  almost  exactly  the  same  as  among  the  black  troops  and  pioneers 
in  the  Windward  and  Leeward  command :  the  former  being  as  839  to  820,  and  the  latter  as 
87  to  40  per  1000,  of  mean  strength  annually;  so  that  the  Mauritius  and  West  Indies  seem- 
alike  unsuitcd  to  the  constitution  of  the  negro.  This  shows  how  vain  is  the  expectation,  even 
under  the  most  favorable  circumstances,  of  that  race  ever  keeping  up  or  perpetuating  their 
number  in  either  of  these  colonies,  when  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  selected  for  their  strength 
and  capability  for  labor,  subject  to  no  physical  defect  at  enlistment,  and  secured  by  military 
regulations  from  all  harsh  treatment,  die  nearly  four  times  as  rapidly  as  the  aboriginal  inha- 
bitants of  the  Cape,  or  other  healthy  countries,  at  the  same  age ;  and  at  least  thrice  as  rapidly  as 
the  while  population  of  the  Mauritius.  Indeed,  so  fast  is  the  negro  race  decreasing  there,  that, 
in  five  years,  the  deaths  have  exceeded  the  births  by  upwards  of  6000,  in  a  population  of  60,000. 

"However  difficult  it  may  be  to  assign  an  efficient  cause,  it  is  certain  that  the  inhabitants 
of  different  countries  have  different  susceptibilities  for  particular  diseases.  Fevers,  for 
instance,  have  little  influence  on  the  negro  race,  in  the  Mauritius ;  for  no  death  has  occurred 
from  them,  and  the  admissions  have  been  in  much  the  same  proportion  as  among  an  equal 
number  of  persons  in  the  United  Kingdom ;  but  here,  as  in  all  other  colonies  in  which  we 
have  been  able  to  trace  the  fatal  diseases  of  the  negro,  the  great  source  of  mortality  has 
been  that  of  the  lungs ;  indeed,  more  die  trom  that  class  alone,  than  of  Hottentot  troops, 
at  the  Cape,  from  all  diseases  together ;  but  the  latter  are  serving  in  their  natural  climate, 
the  former  in  one  to  which  their  constitution  has  never  adapted,  and  probably  never  will 
adapt  itself. 

"Major  Tulloch  compares  the  mortality  of  the  negro,  from  diseases  of  the  lunge,  in 
various  colonies.     There  died  annually  of  these  affections,  per  1000  of  mean  strength — 

West  coast  of  Africa 6.3 

Honduras 8.1 

Bahamas 9.7 

Jamaica 10.3 

Mauritius 12.9 

Windward  and  Leeward  Command 16.5 

Gibraltar 33.5 

"Thus,  in  his  native  country,  the  negro  appears  to  suffer  from  these  diseases  in  much 
the  same  proportion  as  British  troops  in  their  native  country ;  but,  so  soon  as  he  goes 
beyond  it,  the  mortality  increases,  till,  in  some  colonies,  it  attains  to  such  a  height  as 
seemingly  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  his  race  ever  forming  a  healthy  or  increasing 
population. 

"  It  is  in  vain  that  we  look  for  the  cause  of  this  remarkable  difference,  either  in  tempe- 

19  See  the  distinction  between  "bilious  and  yellow  fever,"  in  the  Essay  by  Prof.  Kichard 
D.  Arnold,  M.  D.,  of  Savannah,  read  before  the  Medical  Society  of  the  State  of  Georgia, 
Augusta,  Ga.,  1856. 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  383 

rature,  moisture,  or  any  of  those  appreciable  atmospheric  agencies  by  which  the  human 
frame  is  likely  to  be  affected  in  some  climates  more  than  others ;  and  it  is  consequently 
impossible,  from  any  other  data  than  that  which  the  experience  of  medical  records  fur- 
nishes, to  say  where  this  class  of  troops  can  be  employed  with  advantage.  Nearly  two- 
thirds  of  the  mortality  from  diseases  of  the  lungs,  among  negroes,  arises  from  pulmonary 
consumption ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  remark,  as  showing  how  little  that  disease  affects  the 
natives  of  some  tropical  climates,  though  it  proves  so  fatal  to  those  of  others,  that,  among 
71,850  native  troops  serving  in  the  Madras  Presidency,  the  deaths  by  every  description  of 
disease  of  the  lungs,  did  not,  on  the  average  of  five  years,  exceed  1  per  1000  of  the  strength 
annually." 

In  the  "  Journal  of  the  Statistical  Society  of  London,"  will  be  found 
another  exceedingly  interesting  paper  by  the  same  writer,  now 
Lieut-Colonel  Tulloch,  F.  S.S.,  in  continuation  of  the  same  subject, 
and  giving  later  statistics.20    He  says : 

"The  preceding  tables  apply  entirely  to  European  troops  serving  abroad.  It  may  now 
prove  interesting  to  extend  a  similar  course  of  observations  to  the  influence  of  the  same 
climates  on  the  mortality  of  native  or  black  troops,  during  the  same  periods.  Of  these,  I 
shall  first  advert  to  the  Malta  Fencibles,  composed  of  persons  born  in  the  island. 

"The  strength  of  this  corps,  and  the  deaths  antecedent  to  the  31st  March,  1846,  were  as 
follows : 

STRENGTH.        DEATHS. 

Year  ending  31st  March,  1845 575  5 

"  1846 574  5 

being  at  the  rate  of  8^  per  thousand,  on  the  average  of  these  two  years ;  while  the  average 
from  1825,  when  this  corps  was  raised,  till  1836,  a  period  of  eleven  years,  was  9  per  1000 
annually.  Thus,  this  corps  proved  one  of  the  healthiest  in  the  service;  and,  as  in  the  case 
of  other  troops  serving  in  the  colonies,  its  health  and  efficiency  seem  to  be  on  the  increase. 
"  The  Cape  corps,  composed  of  Hottentots,  shows,  however,  a  still  lower  degree  of  mor- 
tality during  the  same  period :  the  strength  and  deaths  for  these  two  years  having  been 
respectively  as  follows  : 

STRENGTH.        DEATHS. 

Tear  ending  31st  March,  1845 420  3 

1846 448  3 

Average  of  these  two  years 434  3 

being  at  the  rate  of  7  per  1000  annually;  while  the  mortality  in  the  same  corps,  on  the 
average  of  the  thirteen  years  antecedent  to  1836,  was  12  per  1000  annually — thus  showing 
a  great  reduction  of  late  years. 

"The  ratio  of  mortality  in  both  those  corps  has  been  much  below  what  is  usual,  even 
among  the  most  select  lives  in  this  country  (England) ;  and  shows  the  great  advantage, 
wherever  it  is  practicable,  of  employing  the  native  inhabitants  of  our  colonies,  as  a  defen- 
sive force,  in  preference  to  regular  troops  sent  from  this  country. 

"On  comparing  the  diet  and  habits  of  men  composing  these  two  corps  (which  exhibit  so 
low  a  degree  of  mortality  during  a  long  series  of  years),  they  will  be  found  diametrically 
opposite:  the  Maltese  soldier  living  principally  on  vegetable  diet,  and  rarely  indulging  in 
the  use  of  fermented  or  spirituous  liquors,  while  the  Hottentot  soldier,  like  others  of  his 
race,  lives  principally  on  animal  food,  and  that  of  the  coarsest  description.  Owing  to  the 
want  of  rain  and  the  uncertainty  of  the  crops,  grain  is  often  very  scarce  on  the  eastern 

20  Lieut. -Col.  A.  M.  Tulloch,  F.  S.  S.,  "  On  the  Mortality  among  Her  Majesty's  troops 
serving  in  the  Colonies  during  the  years  1844—5."  Read  before  the  Statistical  Society,  Jan. 
21,  1847. 


384         ACCLIMATION;     OR,    THE    INFLUENCE    OF 

frontier  of  the  Cape,  where  this  class  of  troops  is  principally  employed ;  and  they  are 
occasionally  -without  vegetable  or  farinaceous  food  for  several  weeks,  at  which  times  they 
often  consume  from  two  to  three  pounds  of  meat  daily ;  and  their  usual  meat-ration  is  at 
all  times  as  great  as  that  of  the  European  soldier.  Intoxication,  with  ardent  and  fermented 
spirits,  or  by  smoking  large  quantities  of  a  coarse  description  of  hemp,  is  also  by  no  means 
uncommon  among  them ;  yet  has  this  corps  proved  as  healthy  as  the  Maltese  Fencibles,  and 
still  more  so  than  the  native  army  of  the  East  Indies,  whoso  comparative  exemption  from 
disease  has  by  some  been  attributed  to  the  simplicity  of  their  diet,  and  their  general 
abstinence  from  every  species  of  intoxication.  Facts  like  these  show  with  what  caution 
deductions  should  be  drawn,  when  the  returns  of  only  one  class  of  men  are  before  us;  and 
how  necessary  it  is  in  this,  as  in  every  other  species  of  statistical  inquiry,  to  extend  the 
sphere  of  observation,  with  a  view  to  accurate  results. 

"I  shall  next  advert  to  a  class  of  troops  who,  though  born  within  the  Tropics,  and 
serving  in  tropical  colonies,  are  not  natives  of  the  climate  in  which  they  are  stationed. 
First  of  these,  in  number  and  importance,  are  the  three  West  India  corps,  recruited  prin- 
cipally from  negroes  captured  in  slave-ships,  or  inhabitants  of  the  west  coast  of  Africa. 
These  men  are  distributed  throughout  Jamaica  and  the  West  India  islands ;  and  take  the 
duty  of  those  stations  which  long  experience  has  shown  to  be  inimical  to  the  health  of 
Europeans. 

"  The  strength  and  mortality  of  this  class,  for  the  same  two  years  as  were  before  referrod 
to,  have  been  as  follows: 

Jamaica. 

STRENGTH.         DEATHS. 

Tear  ending  31st  March,  1845 770  17 

1846 912  36 

Average  of  these  two  years 841  26J 

West  Indies. 

STRENGTH.         DEATHS. 

Tear  ending  31st  March,  1845 994  23 

"  1846 1175  32 

Average  of  these  two  years , 1084  27£ 

"  These  troops  being  frequently  removed  from  island  to  island,  there  would  be  no  utility 
in  stating  the  separate  mortality  in  each,  as,  in  most  instances,  the  calculation  would 
involve  broken  periods  of  a  year;  but,  on  the  whole,  it  appears  that,  in  Jamaica,  the  mor- 
tality has  been  at  the  rate  of  about  31,  and  in  the  West  Indies  26  per  1000  of  the  force 
annually ;  while  the  mortality  of  the  same  class  of  troops,  at  the  same  stations,  during  the 
twenty  years  antecedent  to  1836,  was  respectively  30  per  1000  in  Jamaica,  and  40  per  1000 
in  the  West  Indies — thus  showing  a  marked  reduction  in  the  mortality  at  the  latter,  during 
the  last  two  years. 

"On  referring  to  the  preceding  results,  a  very  material  difference  will  be  found  between 
the  mortality  of  this  class  of  troops,  and  that  of  the  Cape  corps  and  Maltese  Fencibles, 
who  are  serving  in  their  native  climate :  the  former  being  nearly  four  times  as  high  as 
either  of  the  latter.  Though  the  climate  of  the  West  Indies  is  probably  as  warm  as  that 
of  the  interior  of  Africa"  [in  which  the  author  is  mistaken],  "whence  the  negroes  are 
generally  drawn,  yet  their  constitutions  never  have,  and  probably  never  will,  become  assi- 
milated to  it.  The  high  rate  of  mortality  among  them  can,  in  no  respect,  be  attributed 
either  to  the  habits  or  the  duties  of  the  negro  soldier ;  for  others  of  the  same  race,  who 
are  not  in  the  army,  suffer  in  a  corresponding  proportion"  [as  we  shall  take  occasion  to 
show,  on  a  large  scale. — J.  C.  N] 

"By  a  very  extensive  investigation,  into  which  I  entered  when  engaged  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  West-India  Statistical  Report,  about  seven  years  ago"  [already  referred  to],  "I 
found  that  the  mortality  among  the  negro  slave-population,  even  including  families  who 


CLIMATE     AND     DISEASES    ON     MAN.  385 

had  been  for  several  generations  in  these  colonies,  amounted  to  about  30  per  1000  annually, 
of  all  ages.  Very  little  of  this  mortality  occurred  among  infant  life :  it  fell  principally  on 
persons  of  mature  age ;  among  which  class  it  was  nearly  double  the  proportion  usually 
observed  among  the  civil  population  in  this  country.  That,  under  such  a  mortality,  the 
negro  race  can  ever  increase,  or  even  keep  up  their  numbers,  in  the  West  Indies,  appears  a 
physical  impossibility;  and  there  is  good  reason  to  believe,  that  the  want  of  labor,  so  much 
complained  of,  and  the  demand  for  immigration  from  other  countries,  so  much  insisted  on, 
arises  more  from  the  waste  of  life,  than  from  the  increasing  cultivation  of  the  soil ;  and 
that  a  careful  investigation  into  the  mortality  of  the  negro  population,  at  different  ages, 
would  show  that  the  period  is  not  far  distant,  at  which  that  race  would  become  entirely 
extinct  in  the  West  Indies,  but  for  the  occasional  accession  to  their  numbers  by  fresh 
importations. 

"The  results  on  which  these  observations,  as  to  the  mortality  of  the  negro  population, 
were  founded,  extended,  it  is  true,  over  a  period  when  slavery  prevailed  in  the  island ; 21  and 
it  would  be  interesting  to  those  philanthropists  who  then  attributed  the  high  rate  of  mor- 
tality to  that  cause,  now  to  trace,  from  the  returns  of  each  island,  whether  any  diminution 
has  taken  place  since  freedom  was  established  among  our  sable  brethren ;  but  when  it  is 
shown,  by  these  results,  that  negro  soldiers,  in  the  prime  of  life,  with  every  advantage,  in 
point  of  income,  clothing,  comfort,  and  medical  attendance,  which  the  British  soldier  enjoys 
— with  precisely  the  same  diet  (if  that  can  be  considered  an  advantage),  and  with  much 
greater  regularity  of  habits  than  he  can  boast  of,  are  subject  to  an  annual  mortality  of  from 
2J  to  3J  per  cent.,  there  is  little  reason  to  hope  that,  whether  bond  or  free,  the  negro  race 
will  ever  thrive  or  increase  in  the  West  Indies. 

"The  same  remarks,  as  regards  the  unsuitableness  of  the  climate,  will,  in  a  great  mea- 
sure, apply  to  the  next  class  of  troops  to  which  I  have  to  advert,  viz.,  the  Ceylon  Rifle 
Regiment,  composed  of  Malays,  brought  principally  from  the  Straits  of  Malacca,  for  the 
purpose  of  serving  in  Ceylon ;  where  the  climate,  though  equally  warm,  does  not  appear  by 
any  means  congenial  to  their  constitution,  as  must  be  apparent  from  the  following  results 
regarding  the  mortality : 

STRENGTH.        DEATHS. 

Year  ending  31st  March,  1845 1952  46 

"  1846 1930  36 

Average  of  these  two  years 1941  41 

making  an  annual  mortality  of  21  per  1000 ;  while  the  ratio  among  the  same  class  of  troops, 
for  the  twenty  years  antecedent  to  1836,  was  27  per  1000  annually. 

"  Though  this  mortality  is  considerably  lower  than  that  of  the  negro  troop3  in  the  West 
Indies,  it  is  nearly  twice  as  high  as  that  which  occurs  among  the  native  troops  serving  on 
the  continent  of  India  adjacent — a  sufficient  proof  that  the  Malay  race  is  never  likely  to 
become  assimilated  to  the  climate  of  Ceylon;  indeed,  it  has  long  been  a  subject  of  remark, 
that,  though  their  children  have  been  encouraged  to  enter  the  service  at  a  very  early  age, 
in  order  to  recruit  the  force,  that  expedient  has  proved  insufficient,  without  the  constant 
importation  of  recruits  from  the  Malay  coast. 

"  The  mortality  among  this  class  of  troops,  as  among  every  other  to  which  I  have  adverted, 
has  undergone  a  considerable  reduction  within  the  last  two  years,  as  compared  with  the 
twenty  years  antecedent  to  1836 — owing,  no  doubt,  to  late  improvements  and  ameliorations 
in  the  condition  of  the  soldier ;  but  there  is  little  hope,  either  in  the  case  of  the  Malay  or 
the  negro,  that  this  reduction  will  be  sufficiently  progressive  to  hold  out  a  reasonable  pros- 
pect of  these  races  becoming  thoroughly  assimilated  to  the  climate  of  Ceylon,  in  the  one 
case,  or  the  West  Indies,  in  the  other. 

21  It  will  be  made  to  appear,  further  on,  that  slavery  has  nothing  to  do  with  this  result. 
On  the  contrary,  emancipation  invariably  (in  America)  has  increased  the  ratio  of  mortality. 

25 


386         ACCLIMATION;     OR,     THE    INFLUENCE     OF 

"  To  ascertain  the  races  of  men  best  fitted  to  inhabit  and  develop  the  resources  of 
different  colonies,  is  a  most  important  inquiry,  and  one  -which  has  hitherto  attracted  too 
little  attention,  both  in  this  and  other  countries.  Had  the  government  of  France,  for 
instance,  adverted  to  the  absolute  impossibility  of  any  population  increasing  or  keeping  up 
its  numbers  under  an  annual  mortality  of  7  per  cent,  (being  that  to  which  their  settlers  are 
exposed  in  Algiers),  it  would  never  have  entered  on  the  wild  speculation  of  cultivating  the 
soil  of  Africa  by  Europeans,  nor  have  wasted  one  hundred  millions  sterling,  with  no  other 
result  than  the  loss  of  100,000  men,  who  have  fallen  victims  to  the  climate  of  that  country. 
In  snch  questions,  military  returns,  properly  organized  and  properly  digested,  afford  one 
of  the  most  useful  guides  to  direct  the  policy  of  the  colonial  legislation :  they  point  out  the 
limits  intended  by  nature  for  particular  races ;  and  within  which  alone  they  can  thrive  and 
increase.  They  serve  to  indicate,  to  the  restless  wanderers  of  our  race,  the  boundaries 
which  neither  the  pursuit  of  wealth  nor  the  dreams'  of  ambition  should  induce  them  to 
pass ;  and  proclaim,  in  forcible  language,  that  man,  like  the  elements,  is  controlled  by  a 
Power  which  hath  said :  '  Hither  shalt  thou  come,  but  no  further.'  " 

We  have  thus  gone  through  with  the  statistics  of  Colonel  Tulloeh, 
which  are  remarkable  for  their  fulness  and  the  unprejudiced  tone  in 
which  they  are  given.  They  would  seem  to  show,  veiy  strongly, 
that  certain  races  cannot  become  assimilated  to  certain  climates, 
though  they  may  to  other  climates  far  removed  from  their  original 
birth-place.  The  British  soldiers  and  civilians  enjoy  even  better 
health  at  the  Cape  Colony  than  in  Great  Britain ;  while  the  negro, 
in  most  regions  out  of  Africa,  whether  within  the  Tropics — as  in 
the  Antilles,  or  out  of  them — as  at  Gibraltar,  is  gradually  exter- 
minated. We  shall  now  turn  our  attention  to  statistics  which 
confirm,  in  a  remarkable  manner,  the  conclusions  of  Col.  Tulloeh, 
respecting  the  influence  of  foreign  tropical  climates  on  negroes;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  exhibit  an  increase,  in  the  same  class  of  popula- 
tion, in  the  United  States,  almost  without  a  parallel,  and  certainly 
unprecedented  in  any  laboring  class,  taken  separately;  for  the 
negroes  in  this  country  are  almost  exclusively  of  that  denomi- 
nation. 

The  following  extract  is  taken  from  page  83  of  the  "  Compendium 
of  the  seventh  Census"  of  the  United  States,  by  the  able  superinten- 
dent, J.  B.  D.  DeBow,  Esq. 

"Slavery,  which  had  existed  in  all  the  nations  of  antiquity,  and  throughout  Europe 
during  the  Middle  Ages,  was  introduced  at  an  early  day  into  the  Colonies.  The  first 
introduction  of  African  slaves  was  in  1620,  by  a  Dutch  vessel  from  Africa  to  Virginia.  Mr. 
Carey,  of  Pennsylvania,  in  his  work  upon  the  slave-trade,  says :  '  The  trade  in  slaves,  to 
the  American  colonies,  was  too  small,  before  1753,  to  attract  attention.'  In  that  year, 
Macpherson  (Annals  of  Commerce)  says  511  were  imported  into  Charleston;  and,  in  1765-6, 
the  number  of  those  imported  into  Georgia  (from  their  valuation)  could  not  have  exceeded 
1482.  From  1783  to  1787,  the  British  West  Indies  exported  to  the  Colonies  1392 — nearly 
300  per  annum.  These  West  Indies  were  then  the  entrepot  of  the  trade;  and  though  they 
received  nearly  20,000  (Macpherson)  in  the  period  above-named,  they  sent  to  the  Colonies 
but  that  small  number — proving  the  demand  could  not  have  been  very  large.     After  a  close 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  387 

argument,  from  the  ratio  of  increase  since  the  first  census,  Mb.  Caret  is  enabled  to  recur 
back,  and  compute  the  population  at  earlier  periods,  separating  the  native-born  from  those 
derived  from  importations.  Setting  out  with  the  fact  that  the  slaves  (blacks)  numbered 
55,850  in  1714,  he  finds  that  30,000  of  these  were  brought  from  Africa. 

Importations  previous  to  1715 30,000 

between  1715  and  1750 90,000 

"  "        1751     "    1760 35,000 

"  "        1761     "    1770 74,000 

"  "       1771     "    1790 34,000 

»  "        1790    "    1808 70,000 


Total  number  imported 333,000 

"The  number  since  1790  is  evidently  too  small.  Charleston  alone,  in  the  four  years, 
1804-5-6-7,  imported  39,075.  Making,  therefore,  a  correction  for  such  under-estimate, 
and  a  very  liberal  increase  to  Mk.  Caret's  figures,  the  whole  number  of  Africans,  at  all 
times,  imported  into  the  United  States,  would  not  exceed  375,000  to  400,000. 

"  '  Thus,  in  the  United  States,  the  number  of  Africans  and  their  descendants  is  nearly 
eight  or  ten  to  one  of  those  who  were  imported ;  whikt,  in  the  British  West  Indies,  there  are 
not  two  persons  remaining,  for  every  five  of  the  imported  and  their  descendants.  This  is  seen 
from  the  following:  Imported  into  Jamaica  previously  to  1817,  700,000  negroes — of  whom 
and  their  descendants  but  311,000  remained,  after  178  years,  to  be  emancipated  in  1833. 
In  the  whole  British  West  Indies,  imported  1,700,000 — of  whom  and  their  descendants 
660,000  remained  for  emancipation.' — Caret."22 

Here,  then,  we  have  reliahle  statistics,  establishing  the  astounding 
facts,  that  while  the  blacks  in  the  United  States  have  increased  ten- 
fold, those  of  the  British  West  Indies  have  decreased  in  the  propor- 
tion of  five  to  two.  Of  the  whole  1,700,000  and  their  progeny,  but 
660,000  remained  at  the  time  of  emancipation.  I  have  not  the  data 
at  hand  to  speak  with  precision ;  but  the  fact  is  notorious,  that  the 
diminution  in  the  number  of  blacks,  in  the  British  West  Indies,  has 
been  going  on  more  rapidly  since  than  before  their  emancipation. 
To  what  causes  is  all  this  to  be  attributed  ?  This  is  a  difficult  ques- 
tion, at  present,  to  answer.  Certainly,  no  one  will  contend  that  the 
subjects  of  Great  Britain  were  less  humane  to  their  slaves  than  those 
of  the  United  States ;  or  that  the  negroes  in  the  British  West  Indies 
were  not  in  as  good  a  physical  condition,  in  former  years,  as  those 
of  the  United  States.23  Climate,  then,  with  the  present  lights  before 
us,  seems  to  have  been  the  leading  cause.  There  is  another,  which 
I  have  not  seen  alluded  to  in  these  statistics ;  and  which  may  or 

22  At  the  time  I  am  writing,  the  colored  population,  slave  and  free,  in  the  United  States, 
must  be  at  least  ten  to  one  greater  than  the  importations.  This  population,  in  1850, 
amounted  to  3,638,808;  and,  at  the  present  moment,  October,  1856,  exceeds  4,000,000. 

23  The  condition,  both  moral  and  physical,  has  been  steadily  improving,  in  the  United 
States;  and  is  now  much  better  than  that  of  slaves  half  a  century  ago,  either  here  or  in 
the  West  Indies.  [See  ample  corroborations  of  present  free-negro  mortality,  at  Jamaica, 
in  the  "  Memorial  of  the  West  Indian  merchants  and  others  to  Mr.  Labouchere,"  just  pub- 
lished (London  Post,  Dec.  26,  1856).— G.  R.  G.] 


388       acclimation;    or,   the   influence   of 

may  not  have  its  weight,  viz.,  the  mixture  of  races  and  the  law  of 
hybridity.  That  the  mulattoes  have  a  tendency  towards  extermina- 
tion, is  believed  by  many ;  but  whether  the  white  and  black  races 
have  been  mingled  in  a  greater  proportion  in  the  British  West 
Indies  than  in  the  United  States,  I  have  no  means  now  of  deter- 
mining. 

The  actual  ratio  of  mortality  in  the  slave-population  of  the  United 
States,  I  do  not  think  can  be  arrived  at,  with  certainty,  from  any 
statistics  yet  published.  The  census  of  the  United  States,  published 
by  the  Government,  is  perfectly  reliable  in  respect  to  the  actual 
number  of  negroes  at  each  decennial  period,  and  the  rate  of  increase 
in  this  population ;  but,  I  am  satisfied  that  the  ratio  of  mortality, 
taken  from  the  same  volume,  should  be  received  with  great  caution, 
because  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  planters,  from  negligence, 
are  greatly  wanting  in "  accuracy  on  this  point.  The  average  mor- 
tality, for  the  whole  slave-population,  is  put  down  in  the  census  at 
one  in  sixty.  This  sounds  as  though  it  were  below  the  mark ;  but, 
when  we  reflect  on  the  rapid  increase  of  this  population,  it  may  not 
be  so.  We  have  positive  data  for  the  mortality  of  the  free  negroes 
in  Northern  States,  where  the  climate,  as  well  as  social  condition,  is 
unfavorable  to  this  class ;  and  the  ratio  is  from  one  death  in  twenty, 
to  one  in  thirty  annually,  of  the  entire  number.  In  Boston,  the 
most  northern  point,  the  mortality  is  highest;  and  rather  less  in 
New  York  and  Philadelphia.  I  can  procure  no  statistics  from 
Canada,  where  the  blacks  must  suffer  terribly  from  that  climate. 


"The  blacks  imported  from  Africa,  everywhere  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Slave  States  of 
North  America,  tend  to  extinction.  The  Liberian  experiment,  the  most  favorable  ever 
made,  is  no  exception  to  this  general  tendency.  According  to  the  Report  of  the  Coloniza- 
tion Society,  for  thirty-two  years,  ending  in  1852,  the  number  of  colored  persons  sent  to 
Liberia  amounted  to  7592 — of  which  number  only  6000  or  7000  remained.  The  slave-holding 
States  sent  out  as  immigrants  6792 — the  most  of  whom  were  emancipated  slaves :  the  non- 
slave-holding  States  sent  out  457  persons. 

"The  black  race  is  doomed  to  extinction  in  the  West  Indies,  as  well  as  in  the  Northern 
States  of  this  republic,  if  the  past  be  a  true  index  of  the  future,  unless  the  deterioration 
nnd  waste  of  life  shall  be  continually  supplied  by  importations  from  Africa,  or  by  fugitive 
and  manumitted  slaves  from  Southern  States. 

"  M.  Humboldt  (Personal  Narrative)  has,  with  his  usual  accuracy,  compiled,  from  official 
sources,  the  vital  statistics  of  the  West  India  slaves,  to  near  the  close  of  the  first  quarter 
of  the  present  century  (one  decenuium  before  the  abolition  act  of  Parliament).  He  esti- 
mates the  slaves  in  these  islands  at  1,090,000;  free  negroes,  including  Ilayti,  at  870,000; 
total,  1,960,000.  Mr.  Macgeegoe,  in  his  huge  volumes  on  the  progress  of  America,  gives 
the  total  aggregate  of  blacks  at  1,300,000  in  the  year  1847 — showing  a  decline,  in  the 
preceding  quarter  of  a  century,  of  660,000. 

"M.  Humboldt  says  that  'the  slaves  would  have  diminished,  since  1820,  with  great 
rapidity,  but  for  the  fraudulent  continuation  of  the  slave-trade.' 

"  By  another  calculation,  it  appears  that,  in  the  whole  West-Indian  archipelago,  the  free 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN.  389 

colored  numbered  1,212,900;  the  slaves,  1,147,500;  total,  2,360,500— showing  a  decline, 
in  less  than  five  years,  of  400,500,  notwithstanding  the  accession  by  the  slave-trade.  *  *  * 
"  M.  Humboldt  says :  '  The  whole  archipelago  of  the  West  Indies,  which  now  comprises 
2,400,000  negroes  and  mulattoes,  free  and  slaves,  received,  from  1670  to  1825,  nearly 
5,000,000  Africans.' 

These  extracts  are  taken  from  an  article  by  Dr.  Bennet  Dowler, 
editor  of  the  "New  Orleans  Medical  Journal"  (Sept.  1856),  wherein 
a  great  many  other  interesting  facts  will  be  found,  from  the  writings 
of  Turnbull,  Long,  Porter,  and  Tucker,  as  well  as  from  his  own 
observations.  We  commend  this  article  strongly  to  the  attention 
of  the  reader. 

We  however,  fortunately,  have  some  statistics  which  are  perfectly 
reliable,  at  the  South ;  and  which  will  afford  important  light  on  the 
value  of  life  among  the  blacks.  We  allude  to  those  of  the  city  of 
Charleston,  South  Carolina. 

By  the  United  States'  census  of  1850,  the  entire  population  of 
Charleston,  white  and  colored,  was  42,985 — of  which  20,012  were 
white ;  19,532  slaves ;  free  colored,  3441 ;  total  colored,  22,793. 

Some  years  ago,  in  several  articles  in  the  "Charleston  Medical 
Journal,"  and  the  "ISTew  Orleans  Commercial  Review,"  I  worked  up 
the  vital  statistics  of  Charleston,  from  1828  to  1845,  in  connection 
with  the  subject  of  life-assurance.  The  ratio  of  mortality  among 
the  blacks,  for  those  eighteen  years,  gave  an  average  of  deaths  per 
annum  of  1  in  42 ;  and  that  ratio  of  mortality  was  much  increased 
by  a  severe  epidemic  of  cholera,  in  1836,  which  bore  almost  exclu- 
sively on  the  colored  population. 

We  now  propose  to  commence  where  we  left  off;  and  to  give  the 
statistics  published  by  the  city  authorities,  which  have  been  kept 
with  great  fidelity,  as  we  have  good  reason  to  know.  These  tables, 
for  ten  years,  extend  from  1846  to  1855,  both  inclusive ;  and  the 
census  of  population  being  taken  only  in  the  year  1850,  we  must 
make  this  the  basis  of  calculation.  As  this  year  is  about  the  middle 
one  of  the  ten  above  referred  to,  the  population  of  this  year  may  be 
assumed  as  the  average  of  the  whole;  and  if  the  whole  number 
of  colored  population,  of  1850,  be  divided  by  the  average  number 
of  the  deaths  from  1846  to  1855,  it  will  give  the  average  mortality 
for  the  ten  years,  and  the  result  must  approximate  very  nearly  to  the 
truth. 

[The  New  York  Herald  (Jan.  20,  1857)  republishes,  from  the  London  News  (Dec.  30),  a 
"Curious  History  of  the  Liberian  Republic,"  confirmatory  of  the  ethnological  opinions 
expressed  by  us  in  Types  of  Mankind  (pp.  403-4,  455-6),  concerning  the  absolute  unfitness 
of  negro-populations  for  self-government.  The  News  pledges  itself,  moreover,  to  bring  out 
a  Liberian  document,  containing  "a  painful  disclosure  of  a  state  of  vice  and  misery  (at 
Monrovia),  which  it  might  make  the  kind-hearted  old  Madison  turn  in  his  grave  to  have 
countenanced  or  helped  to  create." — G.  R.  G.] 


390         ACCLIMATION;    OR      THE    INFLUENCE    OF 


TABLE  SHOWING  THE  NUMBER  OF  DEATHS,  FOR  EACH  YEAR,  AMONG  THE 
COLORED  POPULATION  OF  CHARLESTON,  WITH  SOME  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF 
DEATH,    AND    THEIR    LONGEVITY. 


TEAR. 

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1846 

349 

14 

4 

3 

34 

68 

15 

9 

2 

1847 

330 

1 

4 

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32 

70 

21 

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2 

1848 

310 

3 

3 

6 

25 

56 

25 

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2 

1849 

369- 

17 

7 

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i 

29 

75 

20 

9 

4 

124 

1850 

482 

7 

3 

12 

40 

91 

23 

6 

1 

1851 

533 

33 

3 

13 

44 

118 

26 

10 

10 

]852 

721 
688 

30 
20 

13 
3 

30 

18 

i 

54 

53 

138 
138 

39 

25 

13 
12 

7 
3 

309 

1853 

1854 

756 

42 

5 

14 

15 

55 

140 

40 

13 

4 

612 

1855 

686 

41 

4 

10 

... 

56 

118 

34 

18 

3 

Among  the  causes  of  death,  we  have  selected  only  those  which 
belong  particularly  to  the  climate,  and  those  which  press  most  on 
the  blacks.  It  appears  that  very  few  died  from  bowel  complaints  or 
marsh  fevers ;  nor  do  the  whites  here  suffer  much  more  from  any  of 
these,  except  yellow  fever.  Fifteen  of  the  colored  people  died  one 
year  from  yellow  fever ;  but,  doubtless,  they  were  mostly  mulattoes. 

A  good  many  die  from  marasmus  —  most  of  which  cases  are 
scrofula ;  but  the  term  is  often  used  without  a  veiy  definite  mean- 
ing ;  and  we  have,  therefore,  not  put  it  in  the  above  table.  Trismus 
nascentium  and  tetanus  form  a  veiy  large  item  —  an  average  of  42 
per  annum ;  being  about  7  to  1,  compared  to  the  whites.  The  great- 
est outlet  of  life  will  be  found  in  the  organs  of  respiration.  The 
ratio  of  these,  to  deaths  from  all  causes,  is,  among  the  colored  popu- 
lation, 19.3  per  cent.;  and,  among  the  whites,  the  deaths  from  dis- 
eases of  the  respiratory  organs  give  a  ratio  of  17.8  per  cent.  It 
should  be  remarked,  that  the  mortality  from  this  class  of  diseases, 
among  whites,  in  the  tables  of  Charleston,  is  really  greater  than  it 
should  be ;  for  many  persons  come  from  the  North  to  Charleston, 
to  remain  either  permanently  or  for  a  short  time,  on  account  of  weak 
lungs  or  actual  phthisis,  and  die  there — thus  giving  a  percentage  of 
deaths,  from  this  cause,  larger  than  would  be  accounted  for  by  local 
causes.  The  colored  population,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  native  and 
fixed  class.  This  colored  population,  too,  suffers  more  than  the 
whites  from  typhus  and  all  epidemic  diseases,  except  yellow  fever. 

But  one  of  the  most  remarkable  features  in  this  table,  is  the  great 
longevity  of  the  blacks.  While  the  whites,  in  a  nearly  equal  aggre- 
gate of  population,  give  but  15  deaths  between  90  and  100,  and  but 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    GN     IAN.  391 

1  death  above  100  years,  the  blacks,  for  the  same  period  of  ten 
years,  give  101  deaths  between  90  and  100  years  of  age,  and  38 
deaths  over  100  years  ! 

There  have  been  many  disputes  about  the  comparative  longevity 
of  races ;  but  all  the  statistics  of  our  Southern  States  would  seem  to 
prove,  that  the  negroes  are  the  longest-lived  race  in  the  world ;  and 
if  a  longevity  of  any  other  race  can  be  shown,  equal  to  the  blacks 
of  Charleston^  we  have  been  unable  to  find  the  statistics. 

On  a  review  of  the  tables  of  mortality  from  Charleston,  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  average  mortality  of  the  colored  population,  for  the 
last  ten  years,  is  1  in  43.6 — about  the  same  ratio  as  the  eighteen 
previous  years.  "When  it  is  remembered  that  this  is  exclusively  a 
laboring  class,  and  including  a  considerable  proportion  of  free 
colored  population,  it  cannot  but  excite  our  wonder.  It  proves  two 
points :  1.  That  the  black  races  assimilate  readily  to  our  climate ;  2. 
That  they  are  here  in  a  more  favorable  condition  than  any  laboring 
class  in  the  world.  It  should,  perhaps,  be  remarked,  that,  in  a  warm 
climate,  a  pauper  population  and  laboring  class  do  not  suffer  from 
the  want  of  protection  against  cold  and  its  diseases ;  which,  at  the 
North,  cause,  among  these  classes,  a  large  proportion  of  their  mor- 
tality. Even  in  the  sickliest  parts  of  our  Southern  States,  there  are 
more  examples  of  longevity,  among  the  whites,  than  are  seen  in  cold 
climates ;  for  the  reason,  I  presume,  that  the  feebleness  of  age  offers 
little  resistance  to  the  rigor  of  northern  climates.  This,  however, 
does  not  prove  that  the  average  duration  of  life  is  greater  South 
than  North.34 

We  have,  thus  far,  called  attention  almost  exclusively  to  two 
extremes  of  the  human  family,  viz.,  the  white  and  black  races  j  and, 
except  incidentally,  have  said  little  about  the  intermediate  races,  and 
the  influence  of  the  climate  and  diseases  of  America  upon  them. 
We  now  propose  to  take  a  glance  at  these  points ;  and  must  express 
our  regret,  at  the  outset,  that  our  statistics  and  other  means  of  in- 
formation here  become  much  less  satisfactory.  We  are  not,  how- 
ever, wanting  in  facts  to  show,  that  the  element  of  race  here,  as 
elsewhere,  plays  a  conspicuous  part.  We  have  already  alluded  to 
the  fact,  that  the  negroes  are  almost  entirely  exempt  froni  the 
influence  of  yellow  fever;  and,  at  one  time,  supposed  that  the 
susceptibility  to  this  disease  was  nearly  in  direct  ratio  to  the  fairness 
of  complexion ;  but  this  idea,  as  we  shall  see,  requires  modification. 

24  If  the  city  of  Charleston  gives  so  low  a  rate  of  mortality  as  1  in  43.6  for  the  blacks 
and  mulattoes,  it  is  presumable  that  the  rural  districts  throughout  the  South  will  give  a 
much  lower  rate  than  in  towns.  Negroes  surfer  much  less  from  consumption  in  the  country 
than  in  towns. 


392         ACCLIMATION;     OR,     THE    INFLUENCE    OF 

It  is  perfectly  true,  as  respects  the  mixed  progeny  of  the  blacks 
and  whites;  for  it  is  admitted  everywhere,  at  the  South,  that  the 
susceptibility  of  this  class  is  in  direct  ratio  to  the  infusion  of  white 
blood ;  but  the  American  Indians  of  the  table-lands,  as  the  Mexi- 
cans, and  the  mixed  bloods  of  Sjmniards  and  Mexicans,  are  infinitely 
more  liable  to  yellow  fever,  than  mulattoes  of  any  grade.  This  law 
of  color  would  seem  to  apply  to  African  and  Asiatic  races,  but  not 
to  the  aboriginal  races  of  America. 

The  following  extract,  from  a  document  of  the  highest  authority, 
will,  I  am  sure,  be  read  with  peculiar  interest,  in  this  connection.25 

"Of  all  protections,  that  of  complexion  was  paramount.  When  the  ships'  crews  "were 
disabled  by  sickness  (and  that  was  in  the  majority  of  instances),  their  places  were  supplied 
by  negro  sailors  and  laborers.  On  board  many  vessels,  black  labor  alone  was  to  be  seen 
employed :  yet,  among  these  laborers  and  stevedores,  a  case  of  yellow  fever  was  never  seen. 
If  to  the  table  of  thirteen  months'  admissions  to  the  hospital,  already  given,  be  added  a 
classified  census  of  the  population  of  the  colony,  information  is  given  which  enables  us  to 
arrive  at  something  like  precise  knowledge  on  this  subject.     (See  table,  infra,  page  394.) 

"  From  this  table,  it  would  appear  that  the  liability  of  the  white  races  to  yellow  fever,  aa 
compared  with  the  dark,  is  as  13.19  per  cent,  to  -00004.  But  this  would  be  rather  an  over- 
estimate of  the  risks  of  the  whites ;  for,  although  the  calculation  is  correct  for  one  day,  it 
is  not  for  the  whole  thirteen  months.  During  the  year  1852,  7670  seamen,  the  crews  of 
vessels,  arrived  at  the  port  of  Georgetown.  If  we  add  one-twelfth  to  this  sum,  it  will  make 
a  total  of  8309,  estimated  all  as  white,  who,  for  a  longer  or  shorter  period,  were  exposed  to 
the  endemic  influence.  This  number  should  be  added  to  that  of  the  white  population 
exposed,  and  the  percentage  of  liability  will  be  as  follows:  whites,  8'436;  darks,  '00004. 
This  computation  is  irrespective  of  the  effects  of  residence  on  the  constitution.  But  the 
numbers  afforded  by  the  census  returns  are  sufficiently  great  and  detailed  to  authorize  a 
purer  and  more  ultimate  analysis  of  the  effects  of  complexion,  or,  in  other  words,  cutaneous 
organization,  on  the  liability  to  yellow  fever  among  the  population  of  the  colony.  We  find 
that,  of  7890  African  (black)  immigrants,  none  contracted  yellow  fever. 

"  Of  9278  West  India  islanders  (black  and  mulatto),  15,  or  -16  per  cent,  contracted  yellow 
fever;  of  10,978  Madras  and  Calcutta  coolies  (black,  but  fine-haired),  42,  or  -38  per  cent, 
contracted  yellow  fever;  10,291  Portuguese  immigrants  (white),  698,  or  6-2  per  cent, 
contracted  yellow  fever. 

"  From  the  foregoing,  the  importance  of  the  skin,  or  that  constitution  of  the  body  which 
is  associated  with  varieties  of  the  dermal  covering,  in  the  etiology  of  yellow  fever,  is  at 
once  apparent." 

The  proportion  of  white  to  the  dark  races,  according  to  our  author, 
was  14,726  to  127,276 ;  while  the  admissions  to  the  public  hospitals, 
for  yellow  fever,  were  1947  of  the  former  to  59  of  the  latter.  He 
puts  down  the  Portuguese  as  whites — whereas,  they  are  by  no  means 
a  fair-skinned  race,  compared  with  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  other 
white  races ;  and  their  mortality  corresponded  with  their  complexion : 
it  was  intermediate  between  the  two  extremes. 

23  Daniel  Blair,  M.  D.,  Surgeon-General  of  British  Guiana,  Report  on  the  first  eighteen 
months  of  the  fourth  Yellow  Fever  Epidemic  of  the  British  Guiana.  See  British  and  Foreign 
lied.  Chir.  Rev.,  January  and  April  Nos.,  1855. 


CLIMATE     AND     DISEASES    ON     MAN.  393 

Dr.  J.  Mendizabel  writes  me:  "The  coolies  are,  in  this  place 
(Vera  Cruz),  as  well  as  in  the  West  Indies,  exempt  from  yellow 
fever." 

From  all  the  information  we  are  able  to  procure,  it  seems  clear 
that  the  Chinese,  in  Cuba,  are  much  less  liable  to  fever  than  Euro- 
peans ;  but  there  are  no  statistics  on  this  point  which  will  enable  us 
to  deal  in  figures. 

The  same  difficulty  exists  with  regard  to  statistics  for  the  Mexican 
races ;  but  it  is  certainty  the  impression  of  the  best-informed  physi- 
cians in  that  country,  with  whom  we  have  corresponded,  that  the 
pure-blooded'Mexicans  suffer  more  from  yellow  fever  than  either  the 
pure-blood  Spaniards,  or  the  mixed  bloods.  It  is  asserted,  also,  that 
the  cross-breeds  of  negroes  and  Mexicans  are  liable  to  this  disease 
just  in  proportion  to  the  blood  of  the  latter  race — as  is  the  case  with 
the  cross-breeds  of  whites  and  negroes. 

Yellow  fever,  with  perhaps  few  exceptions,  has  a  preference  for 
the  races  of  men  in  proportion  to  the  lightness  of  complexion  — 
showing  its  greatest  affinity  for  the  pure  white,  and  least  for  the  jet 
black.26  It  is  remarkable  that  the  plague  prefers  the  reverse  course 
— as  the  following  extract,  from  the  best  of  all  authorities  on  the 
subject,  will  prove. 

"  The  plague,  in  Egypt,  attacks  the  different  races  of  men ;  but  all  are  not  equally 
susceptible.  Thus,  in  all  (he  epidemics,  the  negro  race  suffers  most ;  after  these,  the 
Berbers  or  Nubians;  then  the  Arabs  of  Hedjaz  and  Yemen;  then  the  Europeans;  and, 
among  these,  especially  the  Maltese,  Greeks,  and  Turks,  and  generally  the  inhabitants  of 
South  Europe" ! " 

A  reference  to  Dr.  De  la  Roches'  ample  statistics  of  mortality 
from  yellow  fever,  will  show,  beyond  dispute,  that,  of  the  number 
attacked,  the  highest  ratio  of  mortality  is  almost  invariably  among 
the  pure  white  races — as  the  Germans,  Anglo-Saxons,  &c.  This  has 
been  accounted  for  by  the  fact,  that  they  come  from  cold  latitudes  ; 
and  it  bas  grown  into  an  axiom,  that  the  further  north  the  race,  the 
more  liable  it  is  to  yellow  fever.  Now,  it  is  easily  shown  that  this 
position  is  not  tenable :  the  contrary  is  proven,  by  observations  on 
the  Mexican  races.  There  is  scarcely  any  part  of  the  country  of 
Mexico,  which  is,  to  any  extent,  populated,  that  can  be  called  cold  ; 
and  yet  the  Mexicans  from  the  table-lands  are,  perhaps,  little  less 
liable  to  yellow  fever  than  Germans ;  and  their  own  writers  assert 
that  they  are  quite  as  much  so. 

26  As  far  as  we  can  obtain  facts,  the  dark  European,  Asiatic,  and  African  races,  all  show 
less  susceptibility  to  yellow  fever  than  the  strictly  white;  and  the  red  man  of  America,  if 
an  exception,  we  believe  is  the  only  one.  It  is  as  vain  to  attempt  to  explain  his  suscepti- 
bility, as  it  is  the  exemption  of  negroes  and  mulattoes:  it  is  a  physiological  law  of  race. 

«  A.  B.  Clot-Bey,  Be  la  Pcste,  1840,  p.  7;  and  Coup  d'CEil  sur  la  Peste,  1851. 


394      acclimation;   or,   the  influence  of 

"  Mexico  is  divided,  as  respects  climate,  into  the  tierras  calientes,  or  hot  regions,  the 
tierras  templadas,  or  temperate  regions,  and  the  tierras  frias,  or  cold  regions.  The  first 
include  the  low  grounds,  or  those  under  2000  feet  of  elevation.  The  mean  temperature  of 
the  first  region,  between  the  Tropics,  is  about  77°  Fahr. ;  being  14°  to  16°  above  the  mean 
temperature  of  Naples.  The  tierras  templadas,  which  are  of  comparatively  limited  extent, 
occupy  the  slope  of  the  mountain  chains,  and  extend  from  2500  to  5000  feet  of  elevation. 
The  mean  heat  of  the  year  is  from  68°  to  70°  Fahr. ;  and  the  extremes  of  heat  and  cold 
are  here  equally  unknown.  The  tierras  frias,  or  cold  regions,  include  all  the  vast  plains 
elevated  5000  feet  and  upwards  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  In  the  city  of  Mexico,  at  an 
elevation  of  7400  feet,  the  thermometer  has  sometimes  fallen  below  the  freezing  point. 
This,  however,  is  of  rare  occurrence;  and  the  winters  there  are  usually  as  mild  as  in 
Naples.  In  the  coldest  season,  the  mean  heat  of  the  day  varies  from  55°  to  70°.  The  mean 
temperature  of  the  city  is  about  64°,  and  that  of  the  table-lands  generally  about  62°;  being 
nearly  equal  to  that  of  Rome."28 

With  regard  to  the  great  susceptibility  of  Mexicans  of  the  table- 
lands, and  even  those  of  Metamoras,  and  other  places  in  the  low- 
lands, when  for  the  first  time  exposed,  we  need  only  refer  the  reader 
to  the  "  Report  of  the  Sanitary  Commission  of  New  Orleans  on  the 
Epidemic  Yellow  Fever  of  1853,"  where  ample  testimony  will  be 
found. 

The  report  of  Dr.  McWilliam,  on  the  celebrated  epidemic  of 
yellow  fever  at  Boa  Vista,  in  1845,  will  be  found  interesting,  in  this 
connection ;  and  is  remarkable  for  its  minute  detail  and  accuracy. 
He 


"  The  inhabitants  consist  chiefly  of  dark  mulattoes,  of  various  grades  of  European 
intermixture ;  free  and  enslaved  negroes ;  with  a  small  proportion  of  Europeans,  princi- 
pally Portuguese  and  English. 

"Rate  of  Mortality  from  Yellow  Fever  in  Porto  Sal  Ray. 
EUROPE AKS. 

Portuguese. — Number  exposed  to  the  fever 53 

"  "         attacked  with  fever 47 

"  "        died  "         25 

"  Ratio  of  deaths  in  the  population 1  in  2-1 

"  "  number  attacked 1   "  1-8 

English,  including  two  Americans,  exposed  to  the  fever 11 

"  Number  attacked 8 

"  "         died 7 

"  Ratio  of  deaths  in  population 1  in  1-6 

"  "  number  attacked 1  "  1-1 

French. — Number  exposed  to  fever 2 

"  "         attacked  by  fever 2 

Spaniards. — Number  exposed,  and  not  attacked 2 

28  McCulloch's  Geographical  Dictionary. 


CLIMATE     AISTD    DISEASES    ON"    MAN.  395 

NATIVE     POPULATION. 

Free 666 

Slaves 249 

Total 915 

Died,  65  free  and  3  slaves 68 

Eatio  of  deaths  in  native  population 1  in  134" 

In  this  table,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  ratio  of  deaths  increased  as 
the  complexion  darkened.  Most  of  the  deaths  among  the  native 
population  were  among  the  mulattoes,  and  not  blacks. 

The  Spanish  and  Portuguese  population,  who  are  dark  compared 
with  Anglo-Saxons,  suffer  severely  from  yellow  fever ;  but  do  not,  it 
seems,  of  those  attacked,  die  in  as  great  a  ratio  as  the  fairer  races. 
They  are  very  generally  attacked  in  their  towns,  in  consequence  of 
crowded  population,  bad  ventilation,  and  filthy  habits. 

One  of  the  ablest  statisticians  of  the  day  shows,  by  figures,  that 
yellow  fever,  in  the  Antilles  (where  English  and  French  are  the 
principal  fair  races),  does  not  attack  so  large  a  portion  of  the  popu- 
lation ;  but  is  much  more  fatal  there  than  in  Spain.  In  the  latter 
country,  on  the  other  hand,  he  says,  almost  the  whole  population  of 
towns  are  attacked ;  but  the  mortality  is  much  less,  in  proportion  to 
the  number  of  cases.  He  attributes  this  universality  of  attack  to 
the  crowded  population  and  filth  of  the  Spanish  towns,  and  to 
there  being  no  acclimated  population  where  the  disease  has  been  most 
fatal.  Yellow  fever  is  endemic  in  the  Antilles,  and  only  occasional 
in  Spain.29 

It  is  remarkable  that  these  circumstances  make  no  difference  in 
the  susceptibility  of  the  negro  :  he  always  sleeps  in  badly  ventilated 
apartments ;  is  always  filthy ;  and,  in  the  hottest  weather,  will  lie 
down  and  sleep,  with  a  tropical  sun  pouring  down  upon  his  bare 

29  Moreau  de  Jonnes,  Monographe  de  la  Fievre  Jaune,  &c.  pp.  312-13. 

In  these  new  questions  of  the  liability  to,  or  exemption  from,  local  morbific  influence,  of 
distinct  types  of  man,  we  possess  as  yet  but  few  statistics.  Every  authentic  example, 
therefore,  becomes  interesting.  I  find  the  following  in  Domont  D'Ueville  ( Voyage  de  la 
Corvette  L' Astrolabe,  executee  pendant  les  annees  1826-9,  Paris,  1830,  " Hisloire  du  Voyage," 
V.,  pp.  120  seqq.).  The  island  of  Vanikoro,  "Archipel  de  la  Pe>ouse,"  where  this  great 
navigator  perished,  is  inhabited  exclusively  by  black  Oceanians,  who  there  enjoy  perfect 
health.  Yet,  so  deadly  is  the  climate,  that  the  natives  of  the  adjacent  island  of  Tlkopia, 
who  belong  to  the  cinnamon-colored  and  distinct  Polynesian  race,  taken  thither  as  inter- 
preters by  D'Urville,  never  ventured  to  sleep  ashore,  in  dread  of  the  malarial  poison  which 
ever  proved  fatal  to  themselves,  however  congenial  to  the  blacks,  Capt.  Dillon's  crew, 
previously,  as  well  as  D'Urville's  French  crew,  suffered  terribly  from  the  effects  of  their 
short  anchorage  there.  This  pathological  fact  is  another  to  the  many  proofs,  collected  in 
our  volume,  that  the  black  race  of  Oceanica  is  absolutely  unconnected  by  blood  with  the 
Polynesians  proper.  See  portraits  of  "  Vanikoro-islander"  and  "  Tikopia-islander"  (Nos. 
39,  40,  of  our  Ethnographic  Tableau,  infra),  for  evidence  of  their  absolute  difference  of  type. 


396         ACCLIMATION;     OR,     THE     INFLUENCE     OF 

head,  during  the  day ;  and,  in  the  hottest  night,  will  sleep  with  his 
head  enveloped  in  a  filthy  blanket,  to  keep  the  musquitoes  from 
annoying  him ;  and  yet  is  exempt  from  yellow  fever,  while  it  is 
raging  around  him. 

Rio  Janeiro  has  a  population  of  100,000  whites,  and  200,000 
blacks  and  mixed  bloods.  The  former  are  mostly  Portuguese ;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  explain  their  exemption  from  yellow  fever,  in  the 
epidemic  of  1849-50  (which  has  continued  its  march  northwards, 
and  so  ravaged  the  seaports  and  other  towns  of  the  United  States 
since) — I  say  it  is  difficult  to  explain  the  exemption,  on  any  other 
ground  than  that  of  race.  Not  more  than  3  or  4  per  cent,  of  the 
Brazilians  attacked,  died;  while  29  per  cent,  of  the  seamen 
(foreigners)  died. 

It  has  been  repeatedly  asserted,  that  yellow  fever  never  appeared 
in  Rio  previously  to  this  date ;  but  it  is  exceedingly  questionable 
whether  it  has  not  occurred  there  in  a  mild  form,  but  with  so  little 
mortality  as  not  to  create  alarm.  Yellow  fever  does  unquestionably 
occur  in  all  grades.  We  published,  some  years  ago,  in  the  "Charles- 
ton Medical  Journal,"  a  sketch  of  the  epidemic  which  prevailed  in 
Mobile  in  1847 — of  so  mild  a  grade  as  not  to  prove  fatal  probably 
in  more  than  2  per  cent,  of  those  attacked.  A  reference  to  the 
"Report  of  the  New  Orleans  Sanitary  Commission,"  will  show  that, 
according  to  the  concurrent  testimony  of  the  leading  physicians  of 
Rio,  the  fevers  of  that  city  had  assumed  an  extraordinary  type  for 
several  years  previously  to  the  epidemic  of  1849-50 ;  and  that  many 
of  the  cases  differed  in  no  way  from  yellow  fever :  even  black  vomit 
was  seen  in  some  cases.  It  is  presumable,  therefore,  that  the  popu- 
lation had  been  undergoing  acclimation  against  this  disease,  for 
several  years,  without  knowing  it.  Our  observation  has  satisfied  us, 
that  the  dark-skinned  Spaniards,  Portuguese,  and  other  south  Eu- 
ropeans, as  well  as  the  Jews,  are  more  easily  and  thoroughly  accli- 
mated against  yellow  fever,  than  the  fairer  races.50 

It  has  been  stoutly  maintained,  by  many  writers,  that  intermittent, 
remittent,  and  yellow  fever,  are  but  grades  of  the  same  disease;  and 
as  the  first  two  forms  are  endemic,  at  Rio,  the  escape  of  the  inhabi- 
tants from  yellow  fever,  in  the  late  epidemic,  has  been  accounted  for 
by  acclimation  through  those  marsh  fevers.  I  will  not,  however, 
stop  to  argue  with  any  one  who  contends  for  the  identity  of  marsh 
and  yellow  fevers,  in  our  present  day:  if  their  wow-identity  be  not 
now  proven,  it  is  vain  to  attempt  to  establish  the  non-identity  of 
any  two  diseases.     That  very  epidemic  continued  its  march,  during 

30  The  reader  is  referred  to  Report  of  the  New  Orleans  Sanitary  Commission,  for  much 
valuable  information  about  Rio  Janeiro. 


CLIMATE     AND    DISEASES    ON     MAN".  397 

five  years,  from  Rio  to  New  York;  and  ravaged  hundreds  of  places 
where  remittent  fevers  were  more  common  and  more  violent  than  in 
Rio.  •  To  say  nothing  of  countries  further  south,  all  the  region  from 
New  Orleans  to  Norfolk  is  dotted  with  malarial  towns,  in  which 
yellow  fever  has  prevailed  with  terrible  fatality. 

The  following  extract  is  from  one  of  the  most  competent  authori- 
ties, on  this  subject,  in  the  United  States : 

"  The  immunity  of  the  African  race  from  yellow  fever  is  a  problem  unsolved ;  but  of  the 
highest  import  in  physiology  and  etiology.  Whether  this  immunity  be  owing  to  color,  or 
to  an  unknown  transmissible  and  indestructible  modification  of  the  constitution,  originally 
derived  from  the  climate  of  Africa,  or  from  anatomical  conformation  or  physiological  law, 
peculiar  to  the  race,  is  not  easy  to  determine.  It  does  not  appear  that  yellow  fever  prevails 
under  an  African  sun;  although  the  epidemic  of  New  Orleans,  in  1853,  came  well  nigh 
getting  the  name  'African  yellow  fever,'  'African  plague:'  it  was  for  weeks  so  called. 
Although  non-creolized  negroes  are  not  exempt  from  yellow  fever,  yet  they  suffer  little 
from  it,  and  rarely  die.  On  the  other  hand,  they  are  the  most  liable  to  suffer  from  cholera" 
[and  typhoid  fever. — J.  C.  N.]  "As  an  example  of  the  susceptibility  of  this  race,  take 
the  year  1841:  among  1800  deaths  from  yellow  fever,  there  were  but  three  deaths  among 
the  blacks,  two  having  been  children;  or  1  in  GOO,  or  1  in  14,000  of  the  whole  population."31 

The  Doctor  goes  on  to  show  "that  the  same  immunity  from  death, 
in  this  disease,  is  enjoyed  by  the  black  race  throughout  the  yellow- 
fever  zone." 

The  investigations  of  Dr.  Dowler  (and  there  is  no  one  more  com- 
petent to  examine  a  historical  point  of  this  kind)  lead  him  to  the 
conclusion,  that  yellow  fever  is  not  an  African  disease.  If  this  be 
true,  it  is  a  very  strong  argument  in  favor  of  specific  distinctness  of 
the  negro  race.  We  have  abundant  evidence,  in  the  "United  States, 
that  no  exposure  to  high  temperature  or  marsh  effluvia  can  protect 
an  individual  against  the  cause  of  yellow  fever.  The  white  races 
who  have  been  exposed  to  a  tropical  sun,  and  lost  much  of  their 
primitive  plethora  and  vigor,  are,  as  a  general  rule,  less  violently 
attacked  by  yellow  fever ;  but  the  negro  gains  his  fullest  vigor  under 
a  tropical  sun,  and  is  everywhere  exempt  from  this  disease.32 

31  Bennet  Dowlek,  M.  D.,  "  Tableau  of  the  Yellow  Fever  of  1853,  with  topographical, 
chronological,  and  historical  sketches  of  the  Epidemics  of  New  Orleans,  since  their  origin  in 
1796." 

32  The  works  of  M.  le  Dr.  Boudin — now  M^decin  en  chef  de  1'Hopital  Militaire  du  Roule, 
Paris,  so  well  known  as  a  distinguished  army  physician,  at  home,  in  Greece,  and  in  Algeria, 
are  the  first,  so  far  as  we  know,  in  any  language,  that  approach  this  question  of  races,  in 
relation  to  climate,  with  a  truly  philosophical  spirit.  He  kindly  sent  us,  several  years  ago, 
the  following  essays,  the  titles  of  which  will  show  the  range  of  his  investigations: — "Etudes 
de  G6ologie  Me'dicales,  &c." — "Etudes  de  Pathologie  ComparcSe,  &c." — "  fitudes  de  Geo- 
graphic Medicales,  &c." — "Lettres  sur  l'Algerie" — "Statistique  de  la  population  et  de  la 
colonisation  en  Algfirie" — "Statistique  de  la  mortality  des  Armies." 

We  have,  in  our  essay,  made  frequent  use  of  these  volumes,  from  notes  we  had  taken 
while  reading  them ;  and  should  have  made  more  direct  reference  to  them,  if  we  had  had 


398         ACCLIMATION;     OR,     THE    INFLUENCE    OF 

But  it  is  time  to  bring  this  chapter  to  a  close.  It  was  stated,  at 
the  beginning,  that  our  leading  object  was  to  study  man  in  his  rela- 
tions to  what  we  defined  Medical  Qlimate;  and  we  have  adhered  as 

the  originals  at  hand ;  but  some  of  them,  unfortunately,  had  been  loaned  out,  and  did  not 
reach  us  in  time. 

In  these  essays,  the  reader  -will  find  a  mass  of  very  important  statistical  matter,  bearing 
on  the  influence  of  climates  on  races,  &c.  He  confirms  all  our  assertions  with  regard  to 
the  comparative  exemption  of  negroes  from  malarial  diseases,  and  their  greater  liability 
to  typhoid  and  lung  diseases,  as  well  as  cholera.  He  further  shows  the  interesting  fact, 
that  the  Jews  exhibit  a  peculiar  physiology  and  pathology ;  with  other  singular  data,  from 
which  my  space  and  subject  only  permit  me  to  condense  a  few  vital  statistics  illustrative 
of  the  present  enormous  increase  of  the  "chosen  people." 

In  1840,  the  Jews  in  Prussia  numbered  190,000.  They  had  increased  by  50,000  (35  per 
cent.)  since  the  census  of  1822  The  Christians,  in  the  same  kingdom,  in  1822,  were, 
11,519,000.;  and,  in  1840,  14,734,000  (only  18  per  cent,  of  augmentation).  During  these 
eighteen  years,  births  among  the  Jews  exceeded  deaths  by  29  per  100;  and,  among  the 
Christians,  only  21.  "The  increase  of  the  Jewish  population  is  the  more  remarkable, 
because,  between  1822  and  1840,  some  22,000  Prussian  Jews  embraced  Christianity,  whilst 
there  was  no  instance  wherein  a  Christian  had  accepted  Judaism." 

In  Prussia,  "out  of  100,000  individuals,  are  reckoned: 

CHRISTIAN.  JEWISH. 

Marriages 893  719 

Births 4001  8546 

Deaths,  still-born  comprised 2961  2161" 

the  increase  being  due  to  excess  of  births  over  deaths,  among  the  Jews.  Besides,  the  Jews 
are  longer  lived : — their  women  do  not  work  in  factories,  nor  labor  whilst  nursing ;  so  that, 
upon  100,000  infants,  we  find 

"CHRISTIANS.  JEWS. 

Still-born 3,569  2,524 

Died  in  the  first  year 17,413  12,935" 

Again,  the  men  are  rarely  sailors,  miners,  &c.  They  are  sober.  They  marry  young. 
Upon  100,000,  the  Christians  bring  forth  280  illegitimate  children ;  the  Jews  only  67.  The 
proportion  of  boys  is  greater  among  the  Israelites.  They  are  subject  to  cutaneous  and 
ophthalmic  diseases,  since  the  times  of  Tacitus,  and  of  Moses ;  but  are  wonderfully  exempt 
from  heavier  scourges — from  plague,  in  1336;  from  typhus,  in  1505  and  1824;  from 
intermittent  fevers,  at  Rome,  in  1691;  from  dysentery,  at  Nimegue,  in  1736.  Croup  is  rare 
among  their  children ;  and,  at  Posen,  where  Shlaves  have  the  plica  Polonica  as  1  in  33,  and 
Germans  as  1  in  65,  the  Jews  only  suffer  as  1  in  88. 

They  have  more  old  men  and  more  children  than  Christians ;  and  their  health  is  every- 
where better — owing,  in  part,  to  race  preserving  itself  pure  through  intermarriage ;  and 
especially  to  the  hygiene  enjoined  upon  them  by  their  religion. 
♦  Tacitus,  when  the  Jews  were  exiled  to  Sardinia,  wrote  "Et  si  ob  gravitatem  cceli  inte- 
riissent,  vile  damnum!" — and  again,  "Profana  illis  omnia  quse  apud  nos  sana;  rursum 
concessa  apud  illos  quse  nobis  incesta."  On  which  Dr.  Boudin  observes:33  "This  saying 
of  the  great  historian  is  at  least  as  true  at  the  physical  as  at  the  moral-order  point  of 
view.  The  more  one  studies  the  Jewish  race,  the  more  one  perceives  it  subjected  to  patho- 
logical laws  which,  in  the  double  aspect  of  aptitude  and  immunities,  establish  a  broad 
line  of  demarcation  between  it  and  the  populations  amid  which  it  happens  to  dwell." 

83  £twUs  stattitiques  sur  les  lois  de  Ja  Population,  Paris,  1849,  pp.  24-6. 


CLIMATE    AND    DISEASES    ON"    MAN.  399 

closely  to  the  plan  as  the  complex  nature  of  the  subject  would 
permit. 

After  the  train  of  facts  adduced,  it  will  hardly  be  denied  that  the 
historical  races — those  whose  migrations  have  brought  them  within 
the  range  of  investigation— have  their  appropriate  geographical 
ranges,  beyond  which  they  cannot  go  with  impunity ;  and  there  is 
ample  ground  for  the  belief,  that  the  sam.e  general  law  applies 
equally  to  all  other  races  that  have  not  yet  been  subjected  to  statis- 
tical scrutiny.  Nor  could  any  other  result  have  been  rationally 
looked  for,  by  one  who  reflects  on  the  wonderful  harmony  that  per- 
vades the  infinite  works  of  Nature ;  and  which  is  nowhere  more 
beautifully  illustrated,  than  in  the  adaptation  of  animals  and  plants 
to  climate,  as  exhibited  in  the  innumerable  Faunas  and  Floras  of 
the  earth. 

Viewed  anatomically  and  zoologically,  man  is  but  an  animal;  and 
governed  by  the  same  organic  laws  as  other  animals.  He  has  more 
intelligence  than  others;  combines  a  moral  with  his  physical  nature; 
and  is  more  impressible  than  others  by  surrounding  influences. 
Although  boasting  of  reason,  as  the  prerogative  that  distinguishes 
him,  he  is,  in  many  respects,  the  most  unreasonable  of  all  animals. 
While  civilization,  in  its  progress,  represses  the  gross  vices  of  bar- 
barism, and  brings  the  refinements  of  music,  poetry,  the  fine  arts, 
together  with  the  precepts  of  a  purer  religion,  it  almost  balances  the 
account  by  luxury,  insincerity,  political,  social,  and  trading  vices, 
which  follow  its  march  everywhere.  If  the  ancient  Britons  and 
Kelts  be  fairly  balanced  against  the  modern  Anglo-Saxons,  Yankees, 
and  Gauls,  it  will  be  hard  to  say  in  which  scale  the  most  true  virtue 
will  be  found.  Fashion,  in  our  day,  has  substituted  moral  for  phy- 
sical cruelty.  The  ancient  barbarians  plundered,  and  cut  each  others' 
throats.  Civilized  man  now  passes  his  life  in  scandal  and  the  tricks 
of  trade.  Look  around,  now-a-days,  at  the  so-called  civilized  nations 
of  the  earth,  and  ask  what  they  have  been  doing  for  the  last  half 
century  ?  We  see  man  everywhere,  not  only  warring  against  laws, 
voluntarily  imposed  upon  himself  for  his  own  good,  but  bidding 
defiance  to  the  laws  of  God,  both  natural  and  revealed.  He  is  the 
most  destructive  of  all  animals.  Not  satisfied  with  wantonly  destroy- 
ing, for  amusement,  the  animals  and  plants  around  him,  his  greatest 
glory  lies  in  blowing  out  the  brains  of  his  fellow-man ;  nay,  more,  his 
chief  delight  is  to  destroy  his  own  soul  and  body  by  vice  and  luxury. 
Nor  does  his  rebellious  and  restless  spirit  suffer  him  to  be  content 
with  a  limited  field  of  action :  he  forsakes  the  land  of  his  birth,  with 
all  its  associations,  and  all  the  comforts  which  earth  can  give,  to 
colonize  foreign  lands — where  he  knows  full  well  that  a  thousand 


400         ACCLIMATION;     OR,     THE     INFLUENCE     OF 

hardships  must  await  him,  and  with  the  certainty  of  risking  his  life 
in  climates  that  nature  never  intended  him  for.  One  generation  never 
profits  hy  the  experience  of  another,  nor  the  child  by  that  of  its 
parents.  "Who  will  undertake  to  estimate  the  amount  of  human 
life  sacrificed,  since  the  discovery  of  Columbus,  by  attempts  to 
colonize  tropical  climates  ? 

Naturalists  have  divided  the  earth  into  zoological  realms — each 
possessing  an  infinite  variety  of  animals  and  plants,  peculiar  to  it ; 
but  this  is  not  the  place  for  details  on  this  head.  To  the  reader  who 
is  not  familiar  with  researches  of  this  kind,  we  may  venture  a  few 
plain  remarks.  When  the  continent  of  America  was  discovered 
(with  a  few  exceptions  in  the  Arctic  Circle,  where  the  continents 
nearly  touch),  its  quadrupeds,  birds,  reptiles,  fishes,  insects,  plants, 
all  were  different  species  from  those  found  in  the  Old  World.  Hence 
the  conclusion,  that  the  whole  Fauna  and  Flora  of  America  were 
here  created.  If  we  go  on  to  compare  other  great  divisions  of  the 
world,  such  as  Asia,  Europe,  Africa,  Australia,  Polynesia,  the  same 
general  law  holds  throughout:  each  division  possesses  its  peculiar 
animals  and  plants,  having  no  connection  by  descent  with  others ; 
and  each  group  forming  a  grand  and  harmonious  zoological  province. 

The  question  naturally  arises — Does  man  form  an  exception  to  this 
universal  law?  Can  he,  by  any  evidence,  human  or  otherwise,  be  thus 
separated  from  the  organic  world  ?  We  think  not.  In  each  one  of 
these  natural  realms,  we  find  a  type  of  man,  whose  history  is  lost 
in  antiquity;  and  whose  physical  characters,  language,  habits,  and 
instincts,  are  peculiar; — whose  organization  is  in  harmony  with  the 
station  in  which  he  is  placed,  and  who  cannot  be  transferred  to  an 
opposite  climate  without  destruction. 

Recent  researches  enable  us  to  trace  back  many  of  those  types  of 
man,  with  the  same  characteristics  that  mark  them  now,  at  least 
4000  years.  In  Egypt  alone,  as  proven  by  her  monuments,  were 
seen,  in  those  early  times,  through  the  agency  of  wars  and  com- 
merce, Egyptians,  Berbers,  Nubians,  Abyssinians,  Negroes,  Ionians, 
Jews,  Assyrians,  Tartars,  and  others, — with  the  same  lineaments 
they  now  present,  and  obeying,  no  doubt,  the  same  physiological  and 
pathological  laws.  In  fact,  so  well  defined  were  the  races  in  the 
time  of  the  early  Pharaohs,  that  the  Egyptians  had  already  classified 
them  into  red,  white,  yellow,  and  black ;  and  each  of  the  types,  then 
as  now,  formed  a  link  in  a  distinct  Fauna.34 

Let  us  now  ask  the  reader  to  reflect  on  the  long  chain  of  facts 
presented  in  this  and  the  preceding  chapters,  and  calmly  decide 
whether  we  are  justified  in  drawing  the  following  conclusions : 

84  See  Types  of  Mankind;  aiid  M.  Pulszky's  chap.  II,  infra. 


CLIMATE    AND     DISEASES    ON     MAN.  401 

1.  That  the  earth  is  naturally  divided  into  zoological  realms — 
each  possessing  a  climate,  Fauna,  and  Flora,  exclusively  its  own. 

2.  That  the  Fauna  of  each  realm  originated  in  that  realm,  and 
that  it  has  no  consanguinity  with  other  Faunas. 

3.  That  each  realm  possesses  a  group  of  human  races,  which, 
though  not  identical  in  physical  and  intellectual  characters,  are 
closely  allied  with  one  another,  and  are  disconnected  from  all  other 
races.  We  may  cite,  as  examples,  the  white  races  of  Europe,  the 
Mongols  of  Asia,  the  Macks  of  Africa,  and  the  aborigines  of  America. 

4.  That  the  types  of  man,  belonging  to  these  realms,  antedate  all 
human  records,  by  thousands  of  years ;  and  are  as  ancient  as  the 
Faunas  of  which  each  forms  an  original  element. 

5.  That  the  types  of  man  are  separated  by  specific  characters,  as 
well  marked  and  as  permanent  as  those  which  designate  the  species 
of  other  genera. 

6.  That  the  climates  of  the  earth  may  be  divided  into  physical 
and  medical  ;  and  that  each  species  of  man,  having  its  own  physio- 
logical and  pathological  laws,  is  peculiarly  affected  by  both  climates. 

7.  That  no  race  of  man  can  be  regarded  as  cosmopolite ;  but  that 
those  races  which  are  indigenous  to  latitudes  intermediate  between 
the  equator  and  poles,  approach  nearer  to  cosmopolitism  than  those 
of  the  Arctic  or  the  Torrid  Zone. 

8.  That  the  assertion,  that  any  one  race  ever  has,  or  ever  can  be, 
assimilated  to  all  physical  or  all  medical  climates,  is  a  hypothesis 
unsustained  by  a  single  historical  fact,  and  opposed  to  the  teachings 
of  natural  history. 

J.  C.  KT. 


26 


402  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 


CHAPTER  V. 
the  MONOGENISTS  and  the  POLYGENISTS: 

BEING  AN   EXPOSITION  OP  THE  DOCTRINES  OF  SCHOOLS  PROFESSING  TO  SUSTAIN  DOGMATICALLT 

the  UNITY  or  the  DIVERSITY 

OF 

HUMAN     RACES; 

WITH  AN    INQUIRY    INTO    THE  ANTIQUITY  OP  MANKIND    UPON    EARTH,  VIEWED 
CHRONOLOGICALLY,    HISTORICALLY,   AND   PAL^EONTOLOGICALLY. 

BY  GEO.  R.   GLIDDON. 

"  He  is  the  freeman  whom  the  Truth  makes  free, 
And  all  are  slaves  beside." 

COWPER. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


"  Les  recherches  geographiques  sur  le  siege  primordial,  ou,  comme 
on  dit,  sur  le  berceau  de  l'espece  humaine,  ont  dans  le  fait  un  carac- 
tere  purement  niythique.  'Nous  ne  connaissons,'  dit  Guillaume  de 
Humboldt,  dans  un  travail  encore  inedit  sur  la  diversity  des  langues 
et  des  peuples, '  nous  ne  connaissons  ni  historiquement,  ni  par  ancune 
tradition  certaine,  un  moment  ou  l'espece  humaine  n'ait  pas  ete 
separee  en  groupes  de  peuples.  Si  cet  etat  de  cboses  a  existe  des 
l'origine,  ou  s'il  s'est  produit  plus  tard,  c'est  ce  qu'on  ne  saurait 
decider  par  l'bistoire.  Des  legendes  isolees  se  retrouvant  sur  des 
points  tres-divers  du  globe,  sans  communication  apparente,  sont  en 
contradiction  avec  la  premiere  hypothese,  et  font  descendre  le  genre 
bumain  tout  entier  d'un  couple  unique.  Cette  tradition  est  si 
repandue,  qu'on  l'a  quelquefois  regardee  comme  un  antique  souvenir 
des  hommes.  Mais  cette  circonstance  meme  prouverait  plutot  qu'il 
n'y  a  la  aucune  transmission  reelle  d'un  fait,  aucun  fondement  vrai- 
ment  bistorique,  et  que  c'est  tout  simplement  l'identite  de  la  eoncep- 


THE    POLYGENISTS.  403 

tion  humaine,  qui  partout  a  conduit  les  homrues  a  nne  explication 
semblable  d'un  phenomene  identique.  Un  grand  nornbre  de  mythes, 
sans  liaison  historique  les  uns  avec  les  autres,  doivent  ainsi  leur 
ressemblance  et  leur  origine  a  la  parite  des  imaginations  ou  des 
reflexions  de  1' esprit  bumain.  Ce  qui  montre  encore  dans  la  tradi- 
tion dont  il  s'agit  le  caractere  manifeste  de  la  fiction,  c'est  qu'elle 
pretend  expliquer  un  phenomeue  en  debors  de  toute  experience, 
celui  de  la  premiere  origine  de  l'espece  bumaine,  d'une  maniere 
conforme  a  l'experience  de  nos  jours ;  la  maniere,  par  exemple,  dont, 
k  une  epoque  ou  le  genre  humain  tout  entier  comptait  deja  des 
milliers  d'annees  d'existence,  une  ile  deserte.ou  un  vallon  isole  dans 
les  montagnes  peut  avoir  ete  peuple.  En  vain  la  pensee  se  plongc- 
rait  dans  la  meditation  du  probleme  de  cette  premiere  origine : 
l'bomme  est  si  etroitement  lie  a,  son  espece  et  au  temps,  que  Ton  ne 
saurait  concevoir  un  etre  bumain  venant  au  monde  sans  une  famille 
deja  existante,  et  sans  un  passe.  Cette  question  done  ne  pouvant 
etre  resolue  ni  par  la  voie  du  raisonnement  ni  par  celle  de  l'experi- 
ence, faut-il  penser  que  l'etat  primitif,  tel  que  nous  le  decrit  une 
pretendue  tradition,  est  reellement  bistorique,  ou  bien  que  l'espece 
bumaine,  des  son  principe,  couvrit  la  terre  en  forme  de  peuplades  ? 
C'est  ce  que  la  science  des  langnes  ne  saurait  decider  par  elle-meme, 
comme  elle  ne  doit  point  non  plus  cbercher  une  solution  ailleurs 
pour  en  tirer  des  eclaireissements  sur  les  problemes  qui  l'occupent.' " 1 


Sucb  is  the  language,  and  these  are  the  mature  opinions,  of  two 
brothers,  than  whom  the  world's  history  presents  none  more  illus- 
trious. Here  the  ultimate  results  of  Wilbelm  von  Humboldt,  among 
the  most  acute  philologists  of  his  generation,  stand  endorsed  by  that 
"Nestor  of  science,"  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  whose  immortal 
labors  in  physical  investigation  stretch  over  nearly  three  cycles  of 
ordinary  human  vitality. 

I  subscribe  unreservedly  to  every  syllable  contained  in  the  above 
citation.  According  to  my  individual  view,  this  paragraph  condenses 
the  "ne-pl us-ultra"  of  human  ratiocination  upon  mankind's  origines. 
With  this  conviction,  I  proceed  to  set  forth  the  accident  through 
which  it  prefaces  my  contribution  to  our  new  work  upon  anthro- 
pology. 

My  excellent  and  learned  friend  M.  Gustave  d'Eichthal — so  long 
Secretary  of  the  parental  Societe  Ethnologique  de  Paris,  and  author 

1  Alexandre  de  Humboldt,  "  COSMOS.  Essai  d'une  Description  Physique  du  Monde" — 
traduit  par  H.  Fate.  1".  partie,  Paris,  Gide  &  O.,  1846,  in  8vo.,  pp.  425-7.  I  refer 
to  the  first  French  edition :  the  copy  now  used  having  been  obtained  by  me  at  Paris,  on  its 
first  week's  issue. — G.  R.  G. 


404  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

of  many  erudite  papers — amidst  all  kinds  of  scientific  facilities  for 
which  I  feel  proud  to  acknowledge  myself  dehtor  to  himself  and 
many  of  his  colleagues  (MM.  D'Avezac  and  Alfred  Maury  espe- 
cially), favored  me,  during  my  fourth  sojourn  in  France,  1854-5, 
with  a  set  of  their  Society's  "Bulletins." 

Reperusing  lately  their  instructive  debate  on  the  problem — "  What 
are  the  distinctive  characteristics  of  the  white  and  black  races  ?  What 
are  the  conditions  of  association  between  these  races?"2  I  was  led  to 
open  an  antecedent  ISTo.  ;3  wherein,  after  alluding  to  Cosmos  —  "M. 
Vivien  (de  Saint-Martin)  observes  how,  in  the  extract  quoted  from 
M.  de  Humboldt,  that  which  this  illustrious  writer  terms  the  native 
unity  of  the  human  species,  does  not  seem  to  imply,  as  might  be 
thought,  the  idea  of  descent  from  a  single  pair.  M.  de  Humboldt 
himself,  it  is  true,  does  not  declare  himself,  as  respects  this,  in  a 
manner  altogether  explicit.  But  the  opinion  of  those  eminent  men 
upon  whose  authority  he  relies,  and  of  whom  he  cites  the  words,  is, 
on  the  contrary,  expressed  in  the  most  formal  manner. 

" '  Human  races,  says  Johannes  Miiller,4  in  his  '  Physiology  of 
Man,'  are  the  (diverse)  forms  of  a  single  species,  whose  unions 
remain  fruitful,  and  which  perpetuate  themselves  through  genera- 
tion. They  are  not  species  of  one  genus ;  because,  if  they  were, 
upon  crossing5  they  would  become  sterile.  But,  to  know  whether 
existing  races  of  man  descend  from  one  or  from  many  primitive 
men — this  is  that  which  cannot  be  discovered  by  experience.' ' 

M.  Vivien  continues  with  extracts  from  the  paragraph  that  heads 
'  my  essay.     Certain  typographical  lacuna,  however,  induced  a  refer- 
ence to  Humboldt's  complete  work ;  and  the  readiest  accessible  at 
the  moment  happened  to  be  Otte's  English  translation,  "from  the 
German."6 

2  Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  Elhnol.  de  Paris,  Tome  I*.,  anne'e  1847 ;  "  Stances  du  23  avril  au  9 
juillet,"  p.  59  seqq. — (Vide  ante,  Pulszky's  chapter,  pp.  188-192) 

3  Id.,  ann^e  1846,  pp.  74-6. 

*  Physiol,  des  Menschen,  Bd.  II,  S.  768,  772-4:— and  Kosmos,  Fr.  ed.,  I,  p.  425,  and  p. 
578,  note  38.  Compare  Sabine's  translation  of  this  passage  (I,  p.  352-3)  with  Otte's 
(I,  p.  354). 

5  This  doctrine  now  seems  to  be  a  non-sequilur,  .after  Morton's  researches  upon  hybridity. 
Conf.,  as  the  first  document,  "  Hybridily  in  animals  and  plants,  considered  in  reference  to 
the  question  of  the  Unity  of  the  Human  Species" — Amer.  Jour,  of  Science  and  Arts,  vol. 
Ill,  2d  series,  1847.  The  substance  of  Morton's  later  publications,  in  the  "Charleston 
Medical  Journal,"  may  be  consulted  in  "Types  of  Mankind,"  1854,  pp.  372,  410:  and  they 
have  since  been  enlarged,  by  Dk.  Nott,  in  Hotz's  translation  (Moral  and  Intellectual 
Diversity  of  Races,  Philadelphia,  12mo.,  1856:  Appendix  B,  pp.  473-504)  of  part  of  the 
first  volume  of  De  Goeineau. 

«  Cosmos:  a  Sketch  of  a  Physical  Description  of  the  Universe.  Harpers'  American  ed., 
New  York,  1850,  I,  pp.  354-5 


THE     POL  YGENISTS.  405 

To  my  surprise,  several  passages  (sometimes  in  the  letter,  but 
oftener  in  the  spirit)  did  not  correspond  with  the  extracts  quoted  by 
M.Vivien  de  Saint-Martin,  from  the  French  edition  of  "Cosmos." 
To  the  latter  I  turned.  A  glance  changed  surprise  into  suspicion, 
which  further  collation  soon  confirmed.  Having  thereby  become 
considerably  enlightened,  myself,  upon  the  animus  and  the  literary 
fidelity  with  which  foreign  scientific  works  are  "done  into  English," 
for  the  book-trade  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  of  Ame- 
rica ;  and  inasmuch  as  sundry  theological  naturalists,  in  this  country, 
have  latterly  been  making  very  free  with  Humboldt's  honored  name, 
— estimated  as  their  authority  "par  excellence"  on  the  descent  of  all 
the  diversified  types  of  mankind  from  "Adam  and  Eve  ;"  it  may  be 
gratifying  to  their  finer  feelings,  no  less  than  to  their  nice  apprecia- 
tion of  critical  probity,  to  demonstrate  the  singular  orthodoxy  of 
the  savant  whom  we  all  venerate  in  common. 

Already,  in  1846,  when  transmitting  from  Paris,  to  the  late  Dr. 
Morton,  one  of  the  earliest  copies  of  the  French  edition  of  "Cosmos," 
I  accompanied  it  with  regrets  that  the  twice-used  expression  — "  la 
distinction  desolante  des  races  superieurs  et  des  races  inferieurs" 7 — 
should  have  sanctioned  the  irrelevant  introduction  of  (what  others 
construe  as)  morbid  sentimentalism  into  studies  which  Morton  and 
his  school  were  striving  to  restrict  within  the  positive  domain  of 
science.  How  completely  Morton  disapproved  of  this  unlucky 
term,  has  been  happily  shown  by  his  biographer — our  lamented 
colleague,  Dr.  Henry  S.  Patterson.8  But,  whilst  fully  respecting 
Baron  de  Humboldt's  unqualified  opinion — on  a  doctrine  which- 
other  great  authorities  either  oppose  or  hold  to  be  at  least  moot,  viz., 
the  unity  of  mankind — I  was  not  prepared  for  so  much  of  that  which 
Carlyle  styles  "  flunkeyism"  towards  Anglo-Saxon  popular  credu- 
lity (so  manfully  denounced  by  Dr.  Robert  Knox9),  which  both  of 
the  English  translations  of  "Cosmos"  exhibit. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  open  that  one  which  "was  undertaken  in 
compliance  with  the  wish  of  Baron  von  Humboldt." I0   The  possessor 

7  Cosmos,  Fr.  ed.,  p.  430;  repeated  p.  579,  note  42. 

8  Types  of  Mankind,   "  Memoir  of  Samuel  George  Morton,"  p.  li-liii. 

9  Of  Edinburgh — The  Races  of  Men:  a  Fragment.  Philadelphia  edition,  12mo,  1850,  pp. 
11-2,  19,  37,  65,  247-54,  292— one  might  say  passim.  Allowance  made  for  the  age,  ten  to 
fifteen  years  ago,  -when  the  MSS.  seem  to  have  been  written ;  and  divesting  his  work  of 
much  rash  assertion,  hasty  composition,  and  some  national  or  personal  eccentricities,  its 
author  can  safely  boast  that  it  contains  more  truth  upon  ethnology  than  any  book  of  its 
size  in  the  English  tongue. 

10  Cosmos,  &c.  "Translated  under  the  superintendence  of  Lieut.-Col.  Edward  Sabine, 
R.A.,  For.  Sec.  R.  S.;"  London,  Murray,  2d  ed.,  8vo,  1847;  I,  "Editor's  Preface;  and, 
for  the  omission  complained  of,  p.  353 — after  the  word  'experience'  (438)." 


406  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

of  the  German  original,  or  of  Faye's  French  version,  will  hunt  in 
vain  for  the  long  and  noble  paragraph  above  quoted  !  It  is  simply 
expunged:  probably  not  to  shock  the  conservatism  of  the  Royal 
Society.  Promotion  might  have  been  stopped,  long  ago,  by  the 
"lords  spiritual  and  temporal,"  had  an  officer  in  H.  M.  Service 
dared  even  to  translate  such  heretical  opinions  as  those  avowed  by 
the  brothers  Humboldt:  the  "For.  Sec."  would  have  soon  ceased 
to  be  Secretary  at  all,  to  any  Royal  Society. 

In  the  second,  we  refer  to  Otte's  translation ; "  learning  from  his 
preface — "  The  present  volumes  differ  from  those  of  Mrs.  Sabine  in 
having  all  the  foreign  measures  converted  into  English  terms,  in 
being  published  at  considerably  less  than  one-third  of  the  price,  and 
in  being  a  translation  of  the  entire  work;  for  I  have  not  conceived 
myself  justified  in  omitting  passages,  simply  because  they  might  be 
deemed  slightly  obnoxious  to  our  national  prejudices."  Fair  enough 
this  seems.  That  which  routine  and  expectancies  naturally  forbade 
the  official  to  do,  "into  English,"  might,  one  would  suppose,  be 
honestly  performed  by  a  private  individual.  Nevertheless,  upon 
verification,  we  discover  this  to  be,  also,  as  Talleyrand  once  observed 
to  Castlereagh,  "une  tres  forte  supposition!"  By  paraphrasis  and 
periphrasis,  through  dextrous  substitutions  of  milder  terms,  and  a 
happy  adoption  of  equivocal  interpretations,  Mr.  Otte  has  effaced 
the  precision  of  his  author's  language ;  obscuring  thereby  both  of 
the  Humboldts'  scientific  deductions  so  effectually,  that  their  suppo- 
sititiously-joint  advocacy  of  "all  mankind's  descent  from  Adam 
and  Eve,"  meets  everywhere  with  the  gratitude  and  applause  of 
wondering  theologers ! 

To  render  this  evident,  I  have  chosen  the  French  translation, 
above  cited,  as  an  appropriate  epigraph  and  introduction  to  the 
subjects  developed  in  the  present  chapter.  At  foot,  the  reader  will 
find  Otte's  English 12  rendering  of  the  German  text ;  which  is  like- 

"  Id., — "Translated  from  the  German,  by  E.  C.  Ott£,"  and  before  cited.  Harpers'  New 
York  edition,  1850.  I  wonder  whether  it  is  the  same,  textually,  asBoHN's;  which  doubt 
inclination  does  not  now  prompt  me  to  take  some  trouble  in  verifying. 

12  Extract   from  Otte's  Cosmos,  Amer.  ed.,  pp.  354-5:— 

"  Geographical  investigations  regarding  the  ancient  seat,  the  so-called  cradle  of  the  human 
race,  are  not  devoid  of  a  mythical  character.  'We  do  not  know,'  says  Wilhelm  von  Hum- 
boldt, in  an  unpublished  work  On  the  Varieties  of  Languages  and  Nations,  '  either  from 
history  or  from  authentic  tradition,  any  period  of  time  in  which  the  human  race  has  not 
been  divided  into  social  groups.  Whether  the  gregarious  condition  was  original,  or  of 
subsequent  occurrence,  we  have  no  historic  evidence  to  show.  The  separate  mythical 
relations  found  to  exist  independently  of  one  another,  in  different  parts  of  the  earth, 
appear  to  refute  the  first  hypothesis ;  and  concur  in  ascribing  the  generation  of  the  whole 
human  race  to  the  union  of  one  pair.  The  general  prevalence  of  this  myth  has  caused  it 
to  be  regarded  as  a  traditionary  record  transmitted  from  the  primitive  man  to  his  descend- 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  407 

wise  subjoined.  Unfortunately,  want  of  familiarity  with  the  latter 
tongue  precludes  personal  comparison  of  this  translation  with  the 
original;   but,   for  the   accuracy  of  its  French  interpretation,  we 


ants.  But  this  very  circumstance  seems  rather  to  prove  that  it  has  no  historical  founda- 
tion, but  has  simply  arisen  from  an  identity  in  the  mode  of  intellectual  conception,  which 
has  everywhere  led  man  to  adopt  the  same  conclusion  regarding  identical  phenomena ;  in 
the  same  manner  as  many  myths  have  doubtless  arisen,  not  from  any  historical  connection 
existing  between  them,  but  from  an  identity  in  human  thought  and  imagination.  Another 
evidence  in  favor  of  the  purely  mythical  nature  of  this  belief,  is  afforded  by  the  fact  that 
the  first  origin  of  mankind — a  phenomenon  which  is  wholly  beyond  the  sphere  of  experi- 
ence— is  explained  in  perfect  conformity  with  existing  views,  being  considered  on  the 
principle  of  the  colonization  of  some  desert  island  or  remote  mountainous  valley,  at  a 
period  when  mankind  had  already  existed  for  thousands  of  years.  It  is  in  vain  that  we 
direct  our  thoughts  to  the  solution  of  the  great  problem  of  the  first  origin,  since  man  is 
too  intimately  associated  with  his  own  race,  and  with  the  relations  of  time,  to  conceive  of 
the  existence  of  an  individual  independently  of  a  preceding  generation  and  ago.  A  solution 
of  those  difficult  questions,  which  can  not  be  determined  by  inductive  reasoning  or  by  expe- 
rience— whether  the  belief  in  this  presumed  traditional  condition  be  actually  based  on 
historical  evidence,  or  whether  mankind  inhabited  the  earth  in  gregarious  associations  from 
the  origin  of  the  race — -cannot,  therefore,  be  determined  from  philological  data ;  and  yet 
its  elucidation  ought  not  to  be  sought  for  from  other  sources.'  " 

"Die  geographischen  Forschungen  fiber  den  alten  Sitz,  die  sogennante  Wiege  des 
Menschengeschlechts  haben  in  der  That  einen  rein  mythisclien  Charakter.  '  Wir 
kennen,'  sagt  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt  in  einer  noch  ungedruckten  Arbeit  fiber 
die  Verschiedenheit  der  Sprachen  und  Volker,  '  geschichtlich  oder  audi  nur  durch  irgend 
sichere  Ueberlieferung  keinen  Zeitpunkt,  in  welchem  das  Menschengeschlecht  nicht  in 
Volkerhaufen  getrennt  gewesen  ware.  Ob  dieser  Zustand  der  urspriingliche  war  oder  erst 
sp'ater  entstand,  l'aszt  sich  daher  geschichtlich  nicht  entscheiden.  Einzelne,  an  sehr 
verschiedeuen  Punkten  der  Erde,  ohne  irgend  sichtbaren  Zusammenhang,  wiederkehrende 
Sagen  verneinen  die  erstere  Annahme,  und  lassen  das  ganze  Menschengeschlecht  von 
Einem  Menschenpaare  abstammen.  Die  weite  Verbreitung  dieser  Sage  hat  sie  bisweilen 
fur  eine  Urerinnerung  der  Menschheit  halten  lassen.  Gerade  dieser  Umstand  aber  beweist 
vielmehr  dasz  ihr  keine  Ueberlieferung  und  nichts  geschichtliches  zum  Grunde  lag,  sondern 
nur  die  Gleichheit  der  menschlichen  Vorstellungsweise  zu  derselben  Erklarung  der  gleichen 
Erscheinung  fiihrte :  wie  gewisz  viele  Mythen,  ohne  geschichtlichen  Zusammenhang,  blosz 
aus  der  Gleichheit  des  menschlichen  Dichtens  und  Grfibelns  entstanden.  Jene  Sage  tr'agt 
auch  darin  ganz  das  Gepr'age  menschlicher  Erfindung,  dasz  sie  die  auszer  aller  Erfahrung 
liegende  Erscheinung  des  ersten  Entstehens  des  Menschengeschlechts  auf  eine  innerhalb 
heutiger  Erfahrung  liegende  Weise,  und  so  erkl'aren  will,  wie  in  Zeiten,  wo  das  ganze 
Menschengeschlecht  schon  Jahrtausende  hindurch  bestanden  hatte,  eine  wiiste  Insel  oder 
ein  abgesondertes  Gebirgsthal  mag  bevolkert  worden  sein.  Vergeblich  wfirde  sich  das 
Nachdenken  in  das  Problem  jener  ersten  Entstehung  verticft  haben,  da  der  Mensch  so  an 
sein  Geschlecht  und  an  die  Zeit  gebunden  ist,  dasz  sich  ein  Einzelner  ohne  vorhandenes 
Geschlecht  und  ohne  Vergangenheit  gar  nicht  in  menschlichem  Dasein  fassen  liiszt.  Ob 
also  in  dieser  weder  auf  dem  Wege  der  Gedanken  noch  der  Erfahrung  zu  entscheidenden 
Frage  wirklich  jener  angeblich  traditionelle  Zustand  der  geschichtliche  war,  oder  oh  das 
Menschengeschlecht  von  seinem  Beginnen  an  volkerweise  den  Erbdoden  bewohnte  ?  darf 
die  Sprachkunde  weder  aus  sich  bestimmen,  noch,  die  Entscheidung  anderswoher  nohmond, 
zum  Erklarungsgrunde  fur  sich  brauchen  wollen.'  " 

("Kosmos.  Entwurf  einer  physichen  Weltheschreibung,"  von  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt.    Funfte  Lieferung,  Stuttgurd  und  Tubingen,  pp.  381-2.) 


408  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

possess  the  highest  voucher.  M.  Faye  states:13  "Another  part, 
relative  to  the  great  question  of  human  races,  has  been  translated 
by  M.  Guigniaut,  Member  of  the  Institute.  This  question  was 
foreign  to  my  habitual  studies :  moreover,  it  has  been  treated,  in 
the  German  work,  with  such  superiority  of  views  and  of  style,  that 
M.  fie  Humboldt  had  to  seek,  among  his  friends,  the  man  most 
capable  of  giving  its  equivalent  to  French  readers.  M.  de  Humboldt 
naturally  addressed  himself  to  M.  Guigniaut;  and  this  savant  has 
been  pleased  to  undertake  the  translation  of  the  last  ten  pages  of 
the  text,  as  well  as  of  the  corresponding  notes."  Consequently, 
besides  the  guarantee  for  exactitude  afforded  by  the  name  of  the 
erudite  translator  of  Creuzer's  Symbolik,  it  may  be  taken  for  granted 
that,  whatever  the  German  original  may  or  may  not  say,"  Baron  von 
Humboldt,  to  whom  the  French  edition  was  peculiarly  an  offspring 
of  love,  endorses  the  latter  without  reservation. 

It  only  remains  now  for  me  to  retranslate  M.  Guigniaut's  French 
into  our  own  language,  in  order  that  the  reader  may  seize  the  MM. 
de  Humboldts'  point  of  view.  To  facilitate  his  appreciation,  I 
mark  with  bold  type  those  expressions  requiring  particular  atten- 
tion ;  and,  furthermore,  insert,  between  brackets  and  in  italics, 
such  deductions  as  appear  to  me  legitimately  to  be  evolved  from 
them. 

"  Geographical  researches  on  the  primordial  seat,  or,  as  it  is  said, 
upon  the  cradle  of  the  human  species,  possess  in  fact  a  character 
purely  mythic.  'We  do  not  know,'  says  "William  de  Humboldt,  in 
a  work  as  yet  inedited,  upon  the  diversity  of  languages  and  of  peo- 
ples, '  we  do  not  know,  either  historically,  or  through  any  [zvhat- 
soever]  certain  tradition,  a  moment  when  the  human  species  was  not 
already  separated  into  groups  of  peoples.  [Hebrew  literature,  in 
common  with  all  others,  is  thus  rejected,  being  equally  unhistorical  as 
the  rest.']  Whether  this  state  of  things  has  existed  from  the  origin 
[say,  beginning'],  or  whether  it  was  produced  later,  is  what  cannot 
be  decided  through  history.  Some  isolated  legends  being  re-en- 
countered upon  very  diverse  points  of  the  globe,  without  apparent 
communication,  stand  in  contradiction  to  the  first  hypothesis,  and 
make  the  entire  human  genus  descend  from  a  single  pair  [as,  for 

13  Cosmos,  Ft.  ed.,  "Avertissement  du  Traducteur,"  p.  ii. 

14  Comparative  experience  of  German  authors  and  their  translators  teaches  me  to  be 
particular.  Compare,  for  instance,  CheV.  Bunsen's  JEgyptens  slelle  in  der  Weltgechichte, 
with  what  is  called,  in  English,  its  translation!  As  is  usual  with  political  composition  in 
these  United  States,  one  version  of  the  same  document  is  printed  for  the  North,  and  another, 
very  different,  for  the  South ;  so,  in  like  manner,  that  which  suits  the  masculine  stomachs 
of  German  men  of  science  becomes  diluted,  until  its  real  flavor  is  gone,  before  it  is  offered 
to  the  more  sensitive  palates  of  the  British  and  Anglo-American  "reading  public." 


THE    POLYGE  NIST  S.  409 

example,  in  the  ancient  look  called  "  Genesis."]  This  tradition  is  so 
widely  spread,  that  it  has  sometimes  been  regarded  as  an  antique 
remembrance  of  men.  But  this  circumstance  itself  would  rather 
prove  that  there  is  not  therein  any  real  transmission  of  a  fact,  any- 
soever  truly-historical  foundation ;  and  that  it  is  simply  the  iden- 
tity of  human  conception,  which  everywhere  leads  mankind  to  a 
similar  explanation  of  an  identical  phenomenon.  A  great  number 
of  myths,  without  historical  link  [say,  connection-]  between  the  ones 
and  the  others,  owe  in  this  manner  their  resemblance  and  their 
origin  to  the  parity  of  the  imaginations  or  of  the  reflections  of  the 
human  mind.  That  which  shows  still  more,  in  the  tradition  of 
which  we  are  treating,  the  manifest  character  of  fiction  [Old  and 
New  Testament  narratives  included,  of  course]  is,  that  it  claims  to 
explain  a  phenomenon  beyond  all  human  experience,  that  of  the 
first  origin  of  the  human  species,  in  a  manner  conformable  to  the 
experience  of  our  own  day ;  the  manner,  for  instance,  in  which,  at 
an  epoch  when  the  whole  human  genus  counted  already  thousands 
of  years  of  existence,  a  desert  island,  or  a  valley  isolated  amid 
mountains,  may  have  been  peopled.  Vainly  would  thought  dive 
into  the  meditation  of  this  first  origin :  man  is  so  closely  bound  to 
his  species  and  to  time,  that  one  cannot  conceive  [such  a  thing  as] 
an  human  being  coming  into  the  world  without  a  family  already 
existing,  and  without  a  past  [antecedent,  i.  e.  to  such  man's  advent]. 
This  question,  therefore,  not  being  resolvable  either  by  a  process  of 
reasoning  or  through  that  of  experience,  must  it  be  considered  that 
the  primitive  state,  such  as  a  pretended  [alluding  to  the  Biblical, 
necessarily]  tradition  describes  to  us,  is  really  historical — or  else,  that 
the  human  species,  from  its  commencement,  covered  the  earth  in  the 
form  of  peoples  ? 15  This  is  that  which  the  science  of  languages 
cannot  decide  [as  theologers  suppose!]  by  itself,  as  [in  like  manner] 
it  ought  not  either  to  seek  for  a  solution  elsewhere,16  in  order  to 
draw  thence  elucidations  of  those  problems  which  occupy  it." 

15  «  Peuplades"  corresponds,  therefore,  at  the  Humboldts'  united  point  of  view,  with 
Prof.  Agassiz's  doctrine  (Christian  Examiner,  Boston,  July,  1850)  that — Men  must  have 
originated  in  "nations:"  adopted  and  enlarged  upon  by  Dr.  Nott  and  myself  in  "Types  of 
Mankind,"  pp.  73-9.  Two  years  of  subsequent  and  exclusive  devotion  to  this  study,  in 
France,  England,  and  this  country,  have  satisfied  my  own  mind  upon  its  absolute  truth. 

16  Something  of  the  same  nature,  viz.,  that  comparative  philology  should  confine  its 
investigations  within  its  legitimate  sphere,  has  been  set  forth  as  a  precept,  if  violated  in 
practice,  in  that  extraordinary  chapter,  entitled  "  Ethnology  v.  Phonology,"  contributed  by 
Prof.  Max-Miiller  to  Chev.  Bunsen's  still  more  extraordinary  and  most  ponderous  work 
[Christianity  and  Mankind:  their  beginnings  and  prospects:  in  7  volumes!  See  vol.  iii., 
"Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Universal  History,  applied  to  Language  and  Religion,  pp. 
352,  48G,  &c.)  There  was  really  no  need  that  the  erudite  Chevalier  should  warn  his  readers 
(p.  21)  that  "  Comte's  Positivism  has  no  place  in  the  philosophy  of  history,"  understood  a  la 


410  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

We  can  now  appreciate  the  philosophic  tone  in  which  the  Hum- 
bolclts  use  such  terms  as  myths,  fiction,  and  pretended  tradition,  in 
reference  to  every  account  purporting  to  give  us  the  origin  of  man- 
kind— Semitic  narrations  inclusive.  On  the  real  authority  of  the 
latter,  they  doubtless  held  the  same  views  as  their  great  country- 
man, Ideler  : 

"  Traditiones  semiticEe,  quae  in  lihris  Veteris  Testamenti  deposit* 
sunt  et  conservatse,  haud  quaquam  sufficiunt,  quippe  quia  recentioris 
sunt  originis,  ornni  fabularum  genere  refertse  et  nimis  arcto  terrarum 
tractu  circumscripta?,  prretereaque  tarn  indoles  Hebraeoruni  nationi 
propria  quam  diversorum,  qui  singulos  libros  composuerunt,  aucto- 
rum  manifestum  consilium  doctrinam  theocratic*  a  sacerdotum  cor- 
pore  quasi  repraesentatas  condendi  efFecerunt,  ut  verse  historian  princi- 
pia  multis  in  locis  aperte  negligerentur."17 

In  common  with  their  equally-renowned  German  contemporary, 
Lepsitjs,  each,  in  his  inquiries  into  the  origin  of  humanity,  "leaves 
aside  the  theological  point  of  view,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with 
science."18  "The  paradisiacal  myth,"  observes  Prof.  Tucn,19  "has 
been  generally  more  profoundly  understood  by  philosophers  than  by 
theologians.  Kant20  and  Schiller21  have  employed  the  Scripture 
document  in  elucidating  physiological  inquiries  on  the  progressive 
development  of  mankind:  both  of  these  philosophers  correctly 
remark,  that  the  myth  does  not  represent  a  debasement  or  sinking 
down  from  original  perfection  to  imperfection — not  a  victory  of 
sensuality  over  reason;  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  manifests  the  ad- 

Bunsen  :  nor  could  one  have  credited  a\  priori  that  his  learned  contributor  is  the  same  person 
who  wrote  that  excellent  work,  "  The  Languages  of  the  Seat  of  War"  (London,  2d  ed.,  1855.) 
I  am  not  singular  either  in  this  opinion.  A  philologist  of  far  severer  and  profounder 
training  than  the  above-named  scholars,  M.  Eknest  Renan,  of  the  Bibliotheque  Imperiale, 
lias  already  remarked:  "As  for  the  ideas  recently  put  forth  by  M.  Max-Miiller  (dans  les 
Outlines  de  M.  Bunsen,  t.  I,  p.  263  et  suiv.  473  et  suiv.)  upon  the  division  of  tongues  into 
three  families,  Semitic,  Arian,  Touranian — this  last  containing  everything  which  is  neither 
Arian  nor  Semitic ! — and  about  the  original  unity  of  these  three  families,  it  is  difficult  to 
see  in  them  anything  else  than  an  act  of  complaisance  towards  views  that  are  not  his  own ; 
and  one  likes  to  believe  that  the  learned  editor  of  the  Rig- Veda  would  regret  that  a  work 
so  little  worthy  of  him  should  be  too  seriously  discussed"  (Histoire  et  Sysleme  compart  des 
Langues  Semitiques,  "Ouvrage  eouronne°  par  l'Institut,"  lre  partie,  Paris,  1855,  p.  466). 

17  Heemapion,  sive  Rudimenta  Hieroglyphicce  Veterum  JEgyptiorum  Literatures.  Pare 
prior,  Lipsioe,  4to,  1841 ;  p.  3  of  Introduction. 

18  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  233. 

19  Kommenlar  iiber  die  Genesis,  p.  61 :  cited  in  "Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Genesis,  &c." 
from  the  German  of  Dr.  Petek  von  Bohlen  ;  edited  by  James  Heywoop,  M.  P.,  F.  R.  S. ; 
London,  1855;   II,  p.  78. 

20  "  Muthmasslicher  Anfang  des  Menschengeschlects  (Probable  Beginning  of  the  Human 
Race):  Berliner  Monatschrift,  1786,  Sl.  1."— Ibid. 

21  '•  Etwas  iiber  die  erste  Menschengesellschafl  (On  the  First  Human  Society) :  SiimmtHche 
Werke,  1825,  Band  16 — Heyicood's  Von  Bohlen." 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  411 

vancement  of  man  from  a  state  of  comparative  rudeness  to  freedom 
and  civilization.  The  historical  individuality  of  Adam  is  no  longer 
maintained';  he  becomes  the  general  representative  of  humanity." 

"It  is  strange,"  continues  Dohm,  "that  such  pains  have  been 
taken  to  trace  to  the  Jews  not  only  the  origin  of  all  the  ideas  of 
science  and  religion  which  are  found  among  eastern  nations,  but 
even  the  commencement  of  every  possible  variety  of  usage,  custom, 
and  ceremony.  The  small  and  circumscribed  people  of  the  Hebrews, 
who  were  generally  despised,  and  who  never  maintained  any  inter- 
course with  other  nations,  by  trade  or  by  conquest,  by  religious 
missionaries  or  by  philosophical  travellers,  are  supposed,  according 
to  the  dreams  of  certain  learned  men,  to  have  supplied  all  Asia,  and 
from  thence  the  whole  world,  with  religion,  philosophy,  and  laws, 
and  even  with  manners  and  morals" — not  to  mention  Ethnography  ! 

But,  in  Lutheran  Germany,  where  thorough  Hebraical  scholarship 
has  liberated  the  public  mind  from  the  thraldom  of  ignorant  priest- 
craft, these  reasonings  are  familiar  to  every  reader  of  a  "Kosmos  for 
the  People:"22 

"  Nothing  remains  but  to  embrace  the  opinion,  that  the  distinct 
characteristics  of  the  human  race  were  imprinted  at  all  times ;  or 
that,  in  general,  mankind  does  not  descend  from  one  man  and  one 
woman,  from  Adam  and  Eve,  but  from  several  human  pairs  ;  and  to 
answer  this  question  was  already  our  purpose  in  the  present  chapter. 
But  many  of  my  readers  will  now  say,  that  God,  in  the  Bible,  has 
created  only  one  human  pair.  Perfectly  correct.  I  reply  to  this  only, 
that  God  did  not  write  the  Bible,  but  that  Moses  may  have  written 
the  Pentateuch ;  and  that  whether  he  actually  did  write  (these  five 
books),  scholars  do  not  know  themselves.  But  we  know,  quite  cer- 
tainly, that  plants  and  animals  were  created  at  the  same  time,  and 
not  in  several  days  of  creation.  We  know,  very  positively,  that, 
without  -the  sun,  no  day  or  night  interchanges ;  and  that  the  sun 
was  not  created  on  the  fourth,  but  on  the  first  day.  As  certainly 
do  we  know,  that  neither  plants  nor  animals  could  have  lived  pre- 
viously to  that  creation  of  the  sun ;  that  the  beasts,  the  worms,  and 
the  reptiles,  were  not  created  later  than  the  birds ;  and  that  Adam 
and  Eve  were  not  alone  the  first  human  beings  upon  earth." 

"  The  Semitic  race,"  holds  the  latest  and  ablest  historian  of  their 
language,  Renan,23  "is  recognized  almost  uniquely  through  its  nega- 
tive characteristics :  it  has  neither  mythology  [of  its  own]  nor  epopee, 
neither  science  nor  philosophy,  neither  fiction  nor  plastic  arts,  nor 

22  Giebel,  Gesckichte  des  Weltalls  der  Erde  und  Hirer  Bewohner;  Ein  Kosmos  furs  Volke; 
Leipzig,  1851. 

23  Histoire  des  Langues  Simitiques  (supra,  note  16),  p.  16,  25-6. 


412  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

civil  life."  "  The  Semitic  tongues  appear  to  ns,  from  ante-historical 
times,  cantonned  in  the  same  regions  where  we  see  them  spoken 
even  at  this  day,  and  whence  they  have  never  issued,  except  through 
Phoenician  colonies  and  the  Mussulman  invasion :  I  mean  in  that 
peninsular  space  shut  in  at  the  north  by  the  mountains  of  Armenia, 
and  at  the  east  by  the  mountains  which  bound  the  basin  of  the 
Tigris.  "So  family  of  tongues  has  travelled  less,  nor  radiated  less 
exteriorly :  one  would  search  in  vain,  beyond  the  southwest  of  Asia, 
for  a  well-marked  trace  of  an  ante-historical  sojourn  of  the  Shemites. 
The  antique  memorials  of  geography  and  of  history,  contained  in 
the  first  pages  of  Genesis — pages  that  we  have  a  right  to  regard  as 
the  common  archives  of  the  Shemitic  race — can  only  furnish  us 
with  some  conjectures  about  the  migrations  that  preceded  the  entry 
of  the  Shemites  into  the  region  in  which  one  would  feel  tempted,  at 
first  glance,  to  believe  them  to  be  autochthones. 

"  The  Shemites,  in  fact,  are,  without  contradiction,  the  race  which 
has  preserved  the  most  distinct  recollection  of  its  origins.  ISTobility 
among  them  consisting  uniquely  in  descent  by  straight  line  from  the 
patriarch  or  chief  of  the  tribe,  nowhere  are  genealogies  so  much 
prized, — nowhere  are  possessed  of  these  any  so  long  and  so  authentic. 
Genealogy  is  the  essential  form  of  all  primitive  histories  among  the 
Shemites  (miSin)-  The  Toledoth  of  the  Hebrews,  notwithstanding 
their  gaps,  their  contradictions,  and  the  different  re-handlings  which 
they  have  suffered,  are  certainly  those  historical  documents  that 
cause  us  to  approach  nearest  to  the  origin  of  humanity.  Whence 
the  remarkable  fact,  that  other  races,  having  lost  their  own  primitive 
remembrances  {souvenirs),  have  discovered  nothing  better  to  do  than 
to  hitch  themselves  on  to  Semitic  recollections :  so  that  the  origins 
recounted  in  Genesis  have  become,  in  general  opinion,  the  origins 
of  mankind  [at  large  !]. 

"  These  particular  recollections  of  the  Semitic  race,  which  about 
the  first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis  inclose,  divide  themselves  into 
two  very  distinct  parts.  During  the  antediluvian  phase,  it  is  a 
fabulous  geography,  to  which  it  is  very  difficult  to  attach  a  positive 
meaning :  they  are  fictive  genealogies,  of  which  the  degrees  are 
filled,  either  by  the  names  of  ancient  heroes,  and  perhaps  by  some 
divinities  that  are  to  be  found  among  the  other  Semitic  populations ; 
or  by  words  expressive  of  ideas,  and  of  which  the  signification  was 
no  longer  perceived.  They  are  fragments  of  confused  recollections, 
wherein  dreams  are  mixed  up  with  realities,  very  nearly  as  in  the 
remembrances  of  early  infancy.  [It  is  impossible  to  display  more 
penetration  than  M.  Ewald  has  towards  interpreting  these  antique 
pages.     (G-esehichte  des  Volkes  Israel;  I,  p.  309  et  suiv.)     I  must  say, 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  413 

however,  that,  in  my  opinion,  M.  Ewalcl  yields  a  great  deal  too  much 
to  the  temptation  cf  comparing  the  Hebraso-Semitic  origines  with 
Indo-Arian  cosmogonies.]" 

Certainly  the  most  philosophic  of  Semitic  historians,  the  sage  Ebn 
Khaldun,24  has  remarked,  on  national  characteristics:  "It  is  a  curious 
circumstance,  that  the  majority  of  the  learned  among  the  Muslims 
belonged  to  a  foreign  race: — very  few  persons  of  Arabian  descent 
having  obtained  distinction  in  the  sciences  connected  with  the  Law, 
or  in  those  based  upon  human  reason ;  and  yet  the  promulgator  of 
the  Law  was  an  Arab,  and  the  Kur'an,  that  source  of  so  many 
sciences,  an  Arabic  book." 

But  perhaps  the  best-qualified  living  historiographer  of  Palestine, 
no  less  than  the  one  most  versed  in  the  literature  of  his  co-religionists, 
M.  Munk,  declares,  in  respect  to  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis :  "  This 
cosmogony  is  of  an  infantile  simplicity.  One  must  not  see  in  it 
anything  but  a  poem, — containing,  indeed,  some  germs  of  science, 
but  wherein  imagination  outbalances  reflection  ;  and  which  it  would 
be  erroneous  to  judge  from  a  scientific  point  of  view."23 

Finally,  the  most  rigorous  amongst  archaeologists  whom  this  gene- 
ration has  admired,  viz.,  Letronne,  registered  his  sentiments  on 
popular  misconceptions  of  Hebrew  literature,  in  the  subjoined 
language : 

"  There  was  a  time,  and  this  time  is  not  yet  very  far  from  ourselves, 
in  which  all  the  sciences  were  compelled  to  find  their  origin  in  the 
Bible.  It  was  the  unique  basis  upon  which  they  were  permitted  to 
rise ;  and  narrow  limits  had  been  fixed  to  their  expansion.  The 
astronomer,  indeed,  was  allowed  to  observe  the  stars  and  to  make 
almanacs ;  but  under  the  condition  that  the  earth  should  remain  at 
the  centre  of  the  universe,  and  that  the  sky  should  continue  to  be  a 
solid  vault,  interspersed  with  luminous  points :  the  cosmographer 
might  draw  up  charts ;  but  he  was  obliged  to  lay  down  the  principle 
that  the  earth  was  a  plane  surface,  miraculously  suspended  in  space, 
and  held  up  by  the  will  of  God.  If  some  theologers,  less  ignorant 
(than  the  majority),  permitted  the  earth  to  assume  a  round  form,  it 
was  under  express  stipulation  that  there  should  be  no  antipodes.  The 
natural  history  of  animals  was  bound  to  speak  of  the  reproduction 
of  those  which  had  been  saved  in  the  Ark :  history  and  ethnography 

24  Prolegomena;  cited  by  MacGdckin  de  Slane  in  the  Introd.  of  his  translation  of  Ebn 
Khallikan's  Kildb  Wafeeat  el-Adyean  (Biographical  Dictionary) — Oriental  Translation 
Fund,  London,  1843 ;  II,  p.  i. 

25  Palestine,  Univ.  Pittor.,  Paris,  1845;  p.  426: — compare  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  561-6; 
and  also  Pott  (Moses  und  David  keine  Geologen,  Berlin,  1799,  pp.  35-47),  who  proved,  1st, 
that  Genesis  I  contains  no  revelation ;  2d,  still  less  a  revelation  of  geological  facts  ;  3d,  in  no 
manner  a  revelation  made  to  Adam  or  to  Moses. 


414  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

had  for  common  basis  the  dispersion,  over  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
of  the  family  of  Noah. 

"  The  sciences  had,  therefore,  their  point  of  departure  fixed  and 
determinate ;  and  around  each  of  them  was  traced  a  circle,  out  of 
which  it  was  forbidden  to  them  to  issue,  under  pain  of  falling 
instantly  beneath  the  dread  censure  of  theologers, — who  always 
possessed,  at  the  service  of  their  notions,  whether  good  or  bad, 
three  irresistible  arguments,  viz.,  persecution,  imprisonment,  or  the 
stake."26 

Thus,  then,  the  doctrine  above  advocated  by  the  Humboldts  is 
supported,  at  the  present  hour,  by  the  most  brilliant  scholarship  of 
the  European  continent — as  might  easily  be  proved  through  quota- 
tions from  a  hundred  recent  works.  Into  parliamentary-stifled 
England,  even,  the  light  is  beginning  to  penetrate.  For  instance, 
the  erudition  of  Mr.  Samuel  Sharpe  none  will  contest.  ■  To  his 
Hellenic  learning  we  owe  the  most  critically-accurate  translation  of 
the  New  Testament27  our  language  possesses :  to  him,  also,  Egypto- 
logy, among  other  great  services,  is  indebted  for  the  best  "History 
of  Egypt"28  derived  from  classical  sources.  His  remarks  "on  the 
Book  of  Genesis"*3  bear  directly  on  the  subject  before  us :  "We  have 
no  account  of  when  this  first  of  the  Hebrew  books  was  written,  nor 
by  whom.  It  has  been  called  one  of  the  books  of  Moses ;  and  some 
small  part  of  it  may  have  been  written  by  that  great  lawgiver  and 
leader  of  the  Israelites.  But  it  is  the  work  of  various  authors  and 
various  ages.  The  larger  part,  in  its  present  form,  seems  to  have 
been  written  when  the  people  dwelt  in  Canaan  and  were  ruled  over 
by  judges,  when  Ephraim  and  Manasseh  were  chief  among  the 
tribes.  But  the  author  may  have  had  older  writings  to  guide  him 
in  his  history.  It  is  evident,  also,  in  numerous  places,  that  other 
writers,  far  more  modern,  have  not  scrupled  to  make  their  own 
additions.  We  must  divide  it  into  several  portions,  and  each  portion 
will  best  explain  itself." 

Still  more  recently,  an  English  biblical  scholar,  of  no  mean  pre- 
tensions— whose  gentlemanly  temper  and  pleasant  style  inspire 
regrets  that  one  so  truthful  should  be  compelled,  owing  to  the 
dreary  atmosphere  of  national  prejudices  which  surrounds  him,  to 

26  "On  the  cosmographical  Opinions  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  compared  with  the 
philosophical  Doctrines  of  Greece" — Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  (3me  serie),  Paris,  1834;  I, 
p.  602. 

27  The  New  Testament  translated  from  Griesbach's  Text.  London,  12rno,  Moxon,  3d  ed., 
1850. 

«*  London,  8vo,  Moxon,  1846. 

29  Sharpe,  Historic  Notes  on  the  Books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments;  London,  12mo., 
Moxon,  1854;  p.  6. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  415 

fight,  in  the  cause  of  plurality  of  human  origins  and  of  diversity  of 
races,  with  his  visor  down — has  put  forth  a  volume30  that  augurs  well 
for  ethnological  progress  in  Great  Britain.  The  method  of  argu- 
ment, and  the  majority  of  facts  advanced,  will  be  new,  however, 
only  to  the  mere  reader  of  English, — two  hundred  years  having 
elapsed  since  Peyrerius31  started  a  controversy  which,  on  the  conti- 
nent, has  been  prolific  enough,  down  to  Fabre  d'Olivet  and  his  pupil 
Raffinesque,32  and  still  later  to  Klee.33  More  recently  still,  we  find 
an  apposite  passage  in  Dr.  August  Zeune  :3i  "It  is  known  that,  after 
the  uprooting  of  the  several  Antilles  by  the  Spaniards,  Spanish 
ghostly  divines  palliated  the  introduction  of  negro  slaves,  for  the 
purpose  of  working  the  mines,  by  the  assumption  that  negroes,  as 
the  descendants  of  Ham  (that  is  to  say,  the  black),  who  was  accursed 3S 
by  his  father  ISToah;  because  Ham  is  named  in  a  holy  record  as 
'slave  of  all  slaves  among  his  brethren.'  *  *  *  A  well-known  natu- 
ralist, now  deceased,  held  the  wondrous  opinion  that  Ham,  after  his 
father  had  cursed  him,  became  black  from  grief;  and  was  the  {stamm- 
vater)  lineal  progenitor  of  the  negroes.  Which  of  the  three  sons  of 
Noah  became  Kalmucks  ?  Genesis  indicates  three  (Menschenschop- 
fungen)  races,  at  a  much  earlier  day,  in  the  children  of  Adam,  of  the 
Elohirn,  and  of  the  Nephilim,  &c. ;  so  that  Adam  appears  merely  as 
the  stem-father  of  the  Iranian  race,  because  Paradise  also  points  to 
Armenia  [quoting  Schiller,  uber  die  erste  Menschengesellschaft  nach 
der  Mosaichen  Urkunde~\.  *  *  *  Inasmuch  as,  however,  according  to 
the  assertion  of  an  admired  dramatist,  it  has  not  yet  occurred  to  any- 
body to  sustain  that  all  figs  have  sprung  from  a  solitary  primitive  fig, 
even  as  little  can  any  one  admit  the  whole  of  mankind  to  be  derived 
(abstammen)  lineally  from  a  single  human  pair.  Wherever  the  con- 
ditions for  life  were  found,  there  life  has  sprung  forth."  *  *  * 

Did  the  limited  size  of  the  present  work  permit  (its  previous  space 
being  engrossed  by  contributions  of  higher  order  than  polemical  dis- 
cussions upon  the  scientific  value,  in  anthropology,  of  a  single  nation's 

80  Anonymous — The  Genesis  of  the  Earth  and  of  Man:  "A  critical  examination  of  the 
Hebrew  and  Greek  Scriptures,  chiefly  with  a  view  to  the  solution  of  the  question,  whether 
the  Varieties  of  the  Human  Species  be  of  more  than  one  origin,"  &c.  Edited  by  Reginald 
Stuart  Poole,  M.  R.  S.  L.,  &c.     Edinburgh,  12mo,  Black,  1856. 

31  Prm-Adamilce,  sive  ezercitatio  super  Versibus  XIIra0,  XIII"™,  el  XIV10,  capitis  quinti  Epis- 
tolce  D.  Pauli  ad  Romanos,  1655. 

32  Langue  Hebra'ique  resliluee,  Paris,  4to,  1815;  "Cosmogonie  de  Moyse,"  pp.  55-8,  177-8.3, 
211-12: — and  American  Nations. 

33  Le  Deluge,  &c,  Paris,  18mo,  1847;   Chapter  III,  pp.  192-204. 

34  Uber  Schadelbildung  zur  festern  Begriindang  der  Menschenrassen,  Berlin,  4to,  1846; 
pp.  2-4 

35  Similar  anti-scriptural  notions,  so  far  as  the  Hebrew  text  is  concerned,  are  entertained 
by  Dr.  Ward,  Natural  Hist,  of  Mankind  (Society  for  promoting  Christian  knowledge),  Lon- 
don, 12mo,  1849,  p.  195.     Compare  Types  of  Mankind,  voce  KNAaN,  pp.  495-8. 


416  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

literature),  I  would  endeavor,  whilst  striving  to  emulate  our  anony- 
mous author's  charity  and  good  taste,  to  lay  before  his  acumen  proofs 
that,  with  motives  most  laudable  and  utility  unquestionable,  he  has 
tried  to  reconcile  two  things  which  surpass  reconciliation ;  and, 
therefore,  that  his  praiseworthy  labors  will,  unhappily,  satisfy  nei- 
ther the  exigencies  of  natural  science,  on  the  one  hand,  nor  those  of 
rigid  Hebraism,  of  the  modern  school,  on  the  other.  Yet,  as  a  spe- 
cimen of  his  propositions,  I  cannot  refrain  from  the  extract  of  a 
passage  or  two.36 

"  The  narrative  with  which  the  Bible  commences,  ending  with  the 
third  verse  of  the  second  chapter,  is  distinguished  from  that  which 
immediately  follows  it,  as  the  latter  narrative  also  is  from  the  third, 
not  merely  by  the  name  given  therein  to  Deity,  but  in  several  other 
respects.  Its  most  remarkable  characteristic  is  this :  that  it  altoge- 
ther consists  of  a  description  of  events  which  could  not  have  been 
witnessed  by  any  human  being.  [This  is  precisely  the  view  above 
taken  by  the  Humboldts.]  Every  one,  therefore,  who  admits  the 
truth  of  the  Bible,  whatever  be  his  opinion  of  some  other  portions 
of  it,  must  hold  this  narrative  to  be  a  revelation. 

"Now,  we  find  that  revelations  of  this  kind,  of  which  the  subjects 
are  events,  were  generally  conveyed  in  representations  to  the  sight; 
and  hence,  by  the  safest  and  most  legitimate  mode  of  judging,  by 
comparing  Scripture  with  Scripture  [a  sort  of  reasoning  within  a 
circle],  we  are  led  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  narrative  under  our 
consideration  is  most  probably  the  relation  of  a  revelation  by  means  of 
a  vision,  or  rather  a  series  of  visions."  *  *  *  "The  passages  in  the 
Bible  which  are  commonly  regarded  as  deciding  the  question  re- 
specting the  unity  of  the  origin  of  the  human  species,  demand  a 
reverential  caution  of  this  kind  [i.  e.,  'until  we  have  weighed  all 
the  circumstances  of  the  case' — antecedent  paragraph~\  in  him  who 
examines  them :  for  while  these  apparently  indicate  the  origination 
of  all  mankind  from  a  single  pair  of  ancestors,  there  are  others 
which  apparently  imply  the  existence  of  human  beings  not  the 
offspring  of  Adam."  *  *  *  "If  we  regard  Adam  as  the  first  of  all 
mankind,  this  general  view  of  the  origin  and  development  of  lan- 
guage (Chevr.  Bunsen's),  supposing  it  to  be  admitted,  obliges  us  to 
reduce  a  great  part  of  the  history  of  the  book  of  Genesis  to  the 
category  of  faulty  and  vague  traditions,  as  we  have  before  ob- 
served." *  *  * 

BTow,  with  every  deference,  before  exhibiting  such  contradictions 
to  the  eyes  of  the  simple  believer,  and  deducing  therefrom  several 
distinct  lineages  of  the  first  men,  would  it  not  be  the  most  prudent 

36  Genesis  of  Hie  Earth,  &c.  (supra);  pp.  1-2,  11-2,  19,  43-4,  and  181-2. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  417 

and  natural  step,  on  the  part  of  archaeologists,  to  ascertain  previously 
the  relative  age,  writer,  and  peculiarities,  of  each  given  document  ? 
I  cannot  find  that  our  author  has  taken  these  precautions ;  but  I 
read, — "the  existence  of  pre-Adamites,  without  a  revelation,  is  surely 
less  wonderful  than  the  fact  that  there  have  been,  and  still  are,  post- 
Adamites  without  it."  *  *  *  "These  passages,  though  reconcilable 
with  the  general  opinion  respecting  the  origination  of  all  mankind, 
seem  rather  to  indicate  the  existence  of  nations  not  of  the  same  race 
as  the  descendants  of  Adam,  and  not  destroyed  by  the  flood,  and 
the  partition  of  the  lands  of  the  former  among  certain  colonies  of 
the  latter ;  and  an  argument  in  favor  of  this  inference  may  be  drawn 
from  the  fact  that  the  appellation  here  rendered  'the  nations' 
('haggoylm'),  in  other  instances,  which  are  very  numerous,  gene- 
rally, and  perhaps  always,  denotes  the  nations  exclusive  of  the 
people  of  God,  or  of  the  Israelites ;  wherefore  it  is  often  rendered, 
in  the  authorized  version,  'the  Gentiles'  and  'the  heathen.'  If  so, 
we  may  suppose  that  the  confusion  of  tongues  was  a  consequence, 
not  the  cause,  of  the  dispersion  from  Babel.  The  whole  of  the 
tenth  chapter  of  Genesis  seems  to  be  parenthetic." 

"Parenthetically,"  as  applied  to  Xth  Genesis,  is  an  adverb  which, 
so  far  as  my  limited  reading  of  English  biblical  criticism  extends, 
first  occurs  in  a  little  work  in  some  slight  degree  connected  with  my 
former  studies.36  It  is  gratifying  to  find  its  correctness  now  endorsed; 
and  still  more  to  perceive,  that  the  admission  of  the  aboriginal  plu- 
rality of  Human  Races,  sustained  here  in  America  by  the  Mortonian 
school,  compels  English  scholars  so  to  modify  their  interpretations 
of  king  James'  version,  as  to  make  the  diversity-doetvme  harmonize 
with  the  Scriptures — or  vice  versa.  For  my  own  part,  I  congratulate 
both  author  and  editor  on  their  ingenious  and  ingenuous  method  of 
smoothing  a  pathway  for  the  eventual  recognition,  in  England,  of 
our  common  polygenistic  views.  Orthodox  in  treatment,  if  passably 
heretical  in  issues — suaviter  in  modo,  fortiter  in  re — "  The  Genesis  of 
the  Earth  and  of  Man  "  will  percolate  unobtrusively  into  the  Scottish 
as  well  as  the  English  mind;  inevitably  and  speedily  awakening 
echoes,  of  surpassing  benefit  to  Ethnology,  which  books  of  heavier 
calibre  could  not  hope  to  rouse  up,  amid  such  intellectual  conditions, 
in  a  century !     Its  publishers,  therefore,  need  not  sigh  with  Byron, 

"For  through  a  needle  it  easier  for  a  camel  is 
To  pass,  than  this  small  cant-o  into  families." 

36  Olia  Mgypliaca,  London,  8vo.,  Madden,  1849;  p.  141: — reprinted  from  Luke  Bukkk's 
Ethnological  Journal,  London,  1848-9;  and  enlarged  upon  in  Types  of  Mankind,  Philadel- 
phia and  London,  4to.  and  8vo.,  1854;  pp.  466-556. 

s     27 


418  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

My  final  corroboration  of  the  Hnmboldts'  doctrine  has  to  be  drawn 
from  the  antipodes.  Strange  !  Whilst  amid  the  civilizations  of  Eu- 
rope and  America  no  independent  Ethnologic  serial  has  hitherto 
been  able  to  survive,  far  less  to  remunerate  its  editor,  mankind's 
most  "proper  study"  has  found,  for  some  ten  years,  asylum  and 
patronage  at  Singapore ! 37 

The  merit  is  due  to  the  genius,  acquirements,  and  enterprise  of 
an  individual.  If  each  of  the  eight  zoological  realms  over  which 
Agassiz  distributes  the  various  groups  of  mankind  could  boast  of 
possessing  its  Mr.  Logan,  English  science  would  not  have  to  deplore 
the  continued  absence  of  that  true  spirit  of  ethnological  investigation, 
coupled  with  perfect  knowledge  of  the  instruments  to  be  employed, 
in  nearly  all  but  the  Malayan. 

"Ethnology,  in  its  etj'mological  and  narrowest  sense,38  is" — accord- 
ing to  Logan's  judgment — "  the  science  of  nations.  It  investigates 
the  characteristics  and  history  of  the  various  tribes  of  man.  The 
time  seems  to  be  already  come  when  we  may  venture  to  define  it 
more  comprehensively  as  the  science  of  the  Human  Race.  From  the 
investigation  of  the  peculiarities  and  histories  of  particular  tribes  it 
rises  to  the  conception  of  mankind  as  one  race,  and  combining  the 
truth  which  it  gathers  from  every  tribe,  presents  the  whole  as  the 
science  of  the  ethnic  development  of  man.  Those  who  may  consider 
it  premature  to  unite  all  nations  in  the  idea  of  one  race,  can  still 
accept  the  definition  as  indicating  the  science  that  results  from  a 
comparison  of  nations  and  their  developments.  Whether  all  men 
are  descended  from  one  stock  or  not,  may  be  placed  apart  as  an 
enquiry  by  itself,  for  those  who  think  it  worth  while  to  pursue  it  in  the 
present  state  of  our  knowledge.  All  are  agreed  that  man  is  of  one 
kind.  If  the  millions  who  now  people  the  earth  had  some  hundreds 
of  progenitors  instead  of  a  single  pair,  the  science  which  the  defini- 
tion comprises  will  remain  unaffected."  *  *  *  * 

"  I  may  state  here,  once  for  all,  that  ethnology  can  only  be  pur- 
sued as  a  scientific  study  by  viewing  the  Hebraic  religious  develop- 
ment, and  the  Hebrew  records,  in  their  human  aspect ;  that  is,  as 
entering  into  the  ethnic  development  of  the  Aramaean  race  and  of 
the  world.  The  supernatural  element,  and  all  the  discussions  respect- 
ing the  limits  of  inspiration  and  the  methods  of  interpretation,  belong 
to  theological  science,  and  amongst  all  the  discordant  systems  of  the- 

"  The  Journal  of  the  Indian  Archipelago  and  Eastern  Asia,  1847-56;  edited  by  J.  R. 
Logian,  Singapore. 

88  Journ.  of  the  East.  Indian  Archip.,  vol.  iv.,  1850;  "The  Ethnology  of  the  Indian  Ar- 
chipelago;  embracing  inquiries  into  the  continental  relations  of  the  Indo-Pacific  Islanders;" 
pp.  262,  263  note:  and  vol.  vi.,  1852 ;  p.  678-9. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  419 

ology,  that  can  only  be  true  which  is  in  harmony  with  the  truths 
established  by  the  observation  of  God's  works."  ****** 

"  There  is  a  deep-rooted  source  of  error  in  Bunsen's  ethnic  specu- 
lations,39 as  in  those  of  many  other  German  philosophers,  the 
Schlegels  amongst  them.  It  is  assumed  that  the  ethnology  of  the 
ancient  Hebrews,  as  preserved  in  their  sacred  books,  is  a  full  reflec- 
tion of  that  of  the  world.  I  have,  in  another  place,  protested 
against  this  resumption,  in  ethnology,  of  the  system  that  has  im- 
peded the  progress  of  eveiy  branch  of  knowledge  in  succession, 
from  Astronomy  to  Geology,  that  of  endeavoring  to  bind  down  the 
human  mind  to  the  science  of  the  ancient  Hebrews.  There  has 
been  no  divine  revelation  of  Ethnology  any  more  than  of  Geology, 
Zoology,  or  any  other  purely-mundane  science. 

"  We  might  as  justly  refuse  to  recognize  the  existence  of  plants, 
animals,  and  planets,  that  are  not  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  as  base 
our  Ethnology  on  that  of  a  people  who  were  perhaps  the  least 
ethnologic  of  all  great  civilized  nations  that  have  existed.  It  is 
obvious  that  any  ethnic  science  that  does  not  embrace  every  tribe 
and  language  in  the  world  must  be  needlessly  imperfect,  and  that 
an  exclusion  of  large  sections  of  the  human  race  must  render  it 
grossly  so.     Now  it  is  certain  that  the  Hebrews  were  ignorant  of 

39  Alluding  probably  to  the  Chevalier's  paper,  "On  the  results  of  recent  Egyptian  re- 
searches," &c. — Three  linguistic  Dissertations ;  Report  of  the  British  Assoc,  for  the  Adv.  of 
Science  for  1847;  London,  8vo.,  1848: — because  the  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Universal 
History  (supra,  note  16),  1854,  could  not  have  arrived  at  Singapore  four  years  previously. 
And,  while  on  this  subject,  let  me  repudiate  the  preposterously-misnamed  Turanian  theory,  as 
applied  to  the  Aborigines  of  America !  Conceding,  to  the  learned  Egyptologist  and  classi- 
cal scholar,  the  highest  admiration  for  his  acquirements  in  such  arduous  studies,  it  would 
have  been  prudent  in  him,  perhaps,  by  withholding  an  endorsement  of  Schoolcraft's 
History  of  the  Indian  Tribes  of  North  America  (already  five  volumes,  elephant  quarto  !),  not 
to  have  exposed  himself  to  the  charge  of  discussing  themes  upon  which  he  possesses  little 
or  no  knowledge  himself,  and  his  authority,  save  in  the  capacity  of  recorder  of  the  habits 
of  such  living  tribes  as  official  peregrinations  afforded,  but  a  trifle  more.  Chev.  Bunsen 
labors  under  singular  delusion,  if  he  considers  that  this  "great  national  work"  [Outlines,  II, 
pp.  111-13),  carries  any  weight  among  men  of  science  in  this  country.  Americans  feel 
proud,  that  their  Legislature  should  have  generously  voted  "$80,856.50"  (cost  of  the  first 
three  volumes  alone!  see  the  North  American  Review,  Boston,  1853,  Art.  XI,  on  Parts  I,  II, 
and  III,  p.  246),  towards  the  promotion  of  knowledge ;  Philadelphia  may  justly  boast  of 
the  beautiful  typography,  splendid  paper,  and  superb  mechanical  execution,  of  the  work ; 
and  it  likewise  contains  several  contributions  of  a  high  order  from  distinguished  men: 
but  I  will  frankly  state,  from  personal  acquaintance  with  scientific  sentiment,  during  fifteen 
years  that  I  have  visited  the  best-educated  States  in  the  Union,  that,  in  the  opinion  of  those 
qualified  to  judge,  a  twenty-five-cent  pamphlet  could  easily  condense  all  the  knowledge 
paraded,  in  these  five  big  volumes,  by  its  industrious  author.  With  this  respectful  hint 
to  Chev.  Bunsen  and  Prof.  Max-Muller,  I  postpone  specifications  to  a  more  suitable  occa- 
sion ;  because,  at  present,  with  regard  to  this  and  other  Washingtonian  literary  institutions, 
Nunquam  concessa  moveri  Camarina  (Virgil,  Mn.,  Ill,  701). 


420  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

the  very  existence,  not  only  of  the  extensive  outlying  provinces  of 
America  and  Asianesia,  but  of  the  great  mass  of  the  tribes  of  the 
old  world.  They  do  not  appear  to  have  cultivated  a  knowledge  of 
any  non-Semitic  language,  and  consequently  their  ethnic  notions 
respecting  some  adjacent  non-Semitic  tribes  must  have  been  very 
obscure  and  erroneous.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  their  know- 
ledge of  the  Africans  extended  beyond  the  Egyptians,  and  their 
southern  Miotic  neighbors,  the  Ethiopians.  The  European  nations 
were  unknown  to  them,  save  through  some  vague  impressions 
respecting  the  sea-board  tribes  of  the  S.  and  ~W.  coasts,  received 
from  the  reticinent  Phoenicians.  Their  knowledge  of  the  numerous 
nations  of  northern,  middle,  and  eastern  Asia,  was  partial  and 
obscure.  They  do  not  appear  to  have  had  a  suspicion  of  the 
existence  of  the  great  civilized  peoples  of  the  East,  the  Arians  and 
the  Chinese,  and  they  were  as  profoundly  ignorant  of  the  Dravirians, 
as  they  were  of  the  Germans  and  the  ancient  British.40  Nothing 
can  more  conclusively  show  the  extremely  narrow  and  isolated 
character  of  their  ethnology,  and  their  rigid  seclusion  from  time 
immemorial  in  the  Semitic  civilization,  than  the  fact  that  they  had 
entirely  lost,  and  had  been  unable  by  their  observations  to  recover, 
the  idea  of  barbarism.  In  this  respect,  their  ethnology  is  far  below 
that,  not  only  of  Herodotus  and  Manu,  but  of  other  Semitic  nations; 
such  as  the  Arabs,  the  Phoenicians,  and,  in  all  probability,  the 
Babylonians,  at  least  in  their  more  civilized  and  commercial  era. 
It  is  therefore  surprising  to  see  a  writer  like  Bunsen  founding  his 
ethnology  on  that  of  Moses,  which  can  only  be  correct  as  a  partial 
picture  of  the  races  of  S.  E.  Asia,  and  1ST.  E.  Africa,  as  known  to  the 
Hebrews." 

«  Types  of  Mankind,  Part  II,  pp.  466-556;  with  its  "Genealogical  Tableau"  of  Xth 
Genesis,  its  "Map  of  the  World  as  known  to"  the  genesiacal  writer;  thoroughly  confirmed 
the  deductions  here  drawn  by  Mr.  Logan :  and  every  fresh  archaeologist  who  examines  this 
hoary  document  arrives  at  the  same  conclusions.  I  would  now  refer  to  researches  unseen 
by  me,  or  unpublished,  when  I  projected  my  MSS.  for  the  above  work,  at  Mobile,  in  1852. 
1st,  Renan,  Hist,  des  Langues  Semitiques  (supra),  1855,  pp.  27-74,  and  449-63: — 2d, 
Beegmann,  Les  peuples  primitives  de  la  race  de  Jafete.  Esquisse  ethno-genealogique  et  historique. 
Colmar,  8vo.,  1853,  p.  64:  —  3d,  Rawlinson,  Notes  on  the  Early  History  of  Babylonia; 
London,  8vo.,  1854,  pp.  1-2,  note: — 4th,  Heywood's  Von  Bohlen,  (supra,  note  19),  Introd. 
to  the  Booh  of  Genesis,  London,  1855;  II,  pp.  210-54:  —  and  5th,  as  the  most  important, 
because  devoted  exclusively  to  analysis  of  this  subject;  August  Knobel,  Hie  Volkerlafel  der 
Genesis.  Elhnographische  Untersuchungen ;  Giessen,  8vo.,  1850.  I  was  not  aware  of  this 
masterly  book,  until  many  months  after  the  publication  of  my  own  studies  in  "  Types  of 
Mankind."  It  was  subsequently  indicated  to  me  at  Paris,  by  my  valued  friend  M.  Renan. 
With  no  small  gratification,  I  afterwards  discovered  that  Dr.  Knobel's  results  and  my  own  were 
always  similar,  often  identical.  Compare  pp.  9,  13,  137-7,  167,  170,  339-52,  for  particular 
instances,  with  the  same  points  discussed  in  "Types." 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  421 

Such  are  some  of  the  true  principles  for  embracing,  in  these  in- 
quiries, Hebrew  ethnography,  as  an  inestimable,  but,  in  reality,  a 
very  minor  part  of  the  World's  ethnology :  at  the  same  time  that, 
through  the  above  extracts,  we  perceive  but  a  small  portion  of  the 
uncertainties  and  perils,  that  beset  this  new  and  ill- appreciated 
study.  —  "And  yet,"  indignantly,  but  most  righteously  exclaims 
Luke  Burke,  "  And  yet  this  is  the  science  on  which  every  man  is 
competent  to  pass  an  opinion  with  oracular  emphasis ;  the  science  to 
which  missionaries  dictate  laws,  and  which  pious  believers  find 
written  out,  ready  to  their  hands,  in  the  book  of  Genesis.  The 
science,  in  a  word,  which  a  whole  tribe  of  comparative  philologists, 
with  a  fatuity  almost  inconceivable,  have  coolly  withdrawn  from  the 
control  of  zoology,  and  settled  to  their  own  infinite  satisfaction,  as 
per  catalogue  of  barbarian  vocabularies."  The  really  learned  are 
perplexed  with  doubt,  or  appalled  with  difficulty :  the  true  naturalist 
approaches  with  diffidence,  or  states  his  opinion  without  dogmatism 
or  tenacity ;  but  the  theologian  is  perfectly  at  home,  and  has 
arranged  every  thing  long  ago.  The  land  is  his  by  right  Divine, 
his  own  peculiar  appanage ;  and  with  the  authority  of  a  master  he 
peremptorily  decides,  that  a  science,  to  which  even  the  distant  future 
will  scarcely  be  able  to  do  proper  justice,  shall  receive  its  laws  and 
inspirations  from  the  remote  and  ridiculous  past."42 

Having  thus  fortified  what  I  deem  to  be  the  "  ultima  ratio,"  above 
put  forth  on  Human  Origins,  by  the  brothers  Humboldt  conjointly, 
it  may  be  interesting  to  dissect  some  sentences  of  that  magnificent 
paragraph ;  in  order  that  we  may  not  unwittingly  ascribe  to  Wil- 
helm,  the  philologist,  the  more  decided  opinions  of  his  brother  Alex- 
ander, whose  universality  of  science  precludes  special  classification. 

And  first,  it  seems  ominous  to  the  "Unity-doctrine,  that  the  most 
brilliant  philologer  of  his  day  should  have  left  a  manuscript,  "  On 
the  Diversity  of  Languages  and  of  Nations." 

This  manuscript,  however,  being  unpublished,  no  positive  deduc- 
tion can  be  drawn  from  its  mere  title ;  but  the  treatise  must  possess 
some  elements  distinguishing  it  from  the  elder  work,  long  honored 
by  the  scientific  world :  "Uber  die  Verschiedenheit  der  menschlichen 
Sprachbaues;"  On  the  Diversity  of  Structure  of  Human  Languages, — 
contained  in  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt's  researches  into  the  "Kawi- 

41  This  applies  especially  to  an  inexhaustible,  learned,  and  laborious  ethnological  "cata- 
logue-maker," Dr.  Latham.  Vide  the  Brighton  Examiner,  October  2,  1855  —  for  a  critique 
by  Mr.  Luke  Burke,  of  "Dr.  Latham's  Lecture  on  'Ethnology.'" 

42  Charleston  Medical  Journal  and  Review,  Charleston,  S.  C,  vol.  XI,  No.  4,  July  1856 — ■ 
"Strictures,"  &c,  by  Luke  Burke,  Esq.,  Editor  of  the  London  Ethnological  Journal  — 
pp.  457-8. 


422  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

tongue,  in  the  island  of  Java;"43  elsewhere  cited  in  Cosmos.  One 
of  these  passages  is  noteworthy,  not  only  for  the  law  it  enunciates, 
but  also  for  the  variety  of  rendering  it  has  received: 

German  Original.14 — -"Die  Sprache  umschlingt  mehr,  als  sonst  etwas  im  Menschen, 
das  ganze  Geschlecht.  Gerade  in  ihrer  volkertrennenden  Eigenschaft  vereinigt  sie  durch 
das  Wechselverst'andnisz  frenidartiger  Rede  die  Verschiedenheit  der  Individualitaten,  ohne 
ihrer  Eigenthiimlichkeit  Eintrag  zu  rhun.   (A.  a   0.  S.  427.)  " 

Sabine's  Translation.45  —  "Language,  more  than  any  other  faculty,  binds  mankind 
together.  Diversities  of  idiom  produce,  indeed,  to  a  certain  extent,  separation  between 
nations ;  but  the  necessity  of  mutual  understanding  occasions  the  acquirement  of  foreign 
languages,  and  reunites  men  without  destroying  national  peculiarity." 

Otte's  Translation.46 — "Language,  more  than  any  other  attribute  of  mankind,  binds 
together  the  whole  human  race.  By  its  idiomatic  properties,  it  certainly  seems  to  separate 
nations ;  but  the  reciprocal  understanding  of  foreign  languages  connects  men  together,  on 
the  other  hand,  without  injuring  individual  national  characteristics." 

Guigniaut's  Translation.4' — "  Le  langage,  plus  qu'aucune  autre  faculty  de  1'homme, 
forme  un  faisceau  de  l'espece  humaine  tout  entlere.  E  semble,  au  premier  abord,  se'parer 
les  peuples  comme  les  idiomes ;  mais  c'est  justement  la  necessity  de  s' entendre  re'ciproque- 
ment  dans  une  langue  etrangere  qui  rapproche  les  individualite's,  en  laissant  a,  chacune  son 
originality  propre." 

That  the  organs  of  speech  enahle  mankind  to  interchange  their 
thoughts,  is  one  of  those  truisms  to  question  which  would  be  absurd. 
Speech  is  an  inherent  attribute  of  the  "genus  homo ;"  just  as  mewing 
is  to  the  feline,  and  barking  to  the  canine :  hut  it  does  not  follow 
that,  because  a  Lapp  might  by  some  chance  acquire  G-uarani,  a 
Tasmanian  English,  an  Arab  Korean,  a  Mandingo  Madjar,  an  Esqui- 
mau Tamul,  or,  what  is  more  possible,  that  a  thorough-bred  Israeli- 
tish  emigrant  from  ancient  Chaldea  (his  own  national  tongue  being 
forgotten)  might  now  be  found  speaking  any  one  of  these  tongues 
as  his  own  vernacular, — it  does  not  follow,  I  repeat,  either  that 
humanity  is  indivisible  into  groups  of  men  linguistically,  as  well  as 
physically  and  geographically,  distinct  in  origin ;  or  that  "Wilhelm 
von  Humboldt  thought  so :  any  more  than  because  u  felis  catus 
Angorensis"  of  Turkish  Angora  "mews"  like  "felis  brevieaudata" 
of  Japanese  Nippon,  and  both  these  animals  like  "felis  domestica 
ccerulia"  of  Siberian  Tobolsk,48  that  these  three  cats  are  necessarily 

43  Ueber  die  Kawi-Sprache  auf  der  Insel  Java,  Berlin,  4to,  1836.  Cardinal  Wiseman  fre- 
quently quotes  it  eulogistically  in  his  Connection  between  Science  and  revealed  Religion. 

44  Op.  cit.  {supra,  p.  407),  p.  493. 

45  Supra  (note  10) — Cosmos,  I,  p.  cxv,  note  443. 

46  Supra  (note  6) — Cosmos,  I,  p.  359,  note. 

47  Supra  (note  1) — Cosmos,  I,  pp.  579-80,  note  43. 

48  Not  being  myself  a  zoologist,  it  may  be  well  to  shield  assertions,  on  this  cai-question, 
with  the  authority  of  one  who  is.  Prof.  S.  S.  Haldeman  remarks:  "Thus,  the  cat 
mummies  of  Egypt  were  said  to  be  identical  with  the  modern  Felis  domestica ;  and  such 
was  the  general  opinion,  until  the  discovery,  of  Dr.  Riippell,  of  the  genuine  analogue  of  the 
embalmed  species,  in  the  Felis  maniculata  of  Noubia.     I   believe  Professor  Bell  to  be 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  423 

of  the  same  blood  lineage,  identical  species,  or  proximate  geogra- 
phical origin:  notwithstanding  that,  amongst  other  "philosophical 
aphorisms,"  Bunsen — with  whom  philology  and  ethnology  are  syno- 
nymes  through  which  we  shall  recover,  some  day,  the  one  primeval 
language  spoken  by  the  first  pair,  who  are  now  accounted  to  be 
"beatorum  in  coelis" — declares,  "that  physiological  inquiry  [one,  as 
we  all  know,  completely  outside  of  the  range  of  his  high  education 
and  various  studies],  although  it  can  never  arrive  by  itself  at  any 
conclusive  result,  still  decidedly  inclines,  on  the  whole,  towards  the 
theory  of  the  unity  of  the  human  race."!49  I  have  no  hopes,  in 
view  of  his  eai'ly  education  and  present  time  of  life,  that  the  accom- 
plished Chevalier  will  ever  modify  such  orthodox  opinion ;  but 
readers  of  the  present  volume  may  perhaps  discover  some  reasons 
for  differing  from  it. 

But,  even  under  the  supposition  that  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  in 
his  now-past  generation,  when  writing  "  on  the  Diversity  of  Lan- 
guages and  Peoples,"  may  have  speculated  upon  the  possibility  of 
reducing  both  into  one  original  stock,  it  will  remain  equally  certain, 
that,  in  such  assumed  conclusion,  he  was  biassed  by  no  dogmatical 
respect  for  myths,  fiction,  or  pretended  teadition  (ubi  supra) ;  and 
furthermore  that,  if  he  grounded  his  results  on  the  "  Kawi  Sprache," 
he  inadvertently  built  upon  a  quicksand ;  as  subsequent  researches 
have  established. 

Amongst  scientific  travellers  and  enlightened  Orientalists  of  Eng- 
land, the  venerable  author  of  the  "History  of  the  Indian  Archipe- 
lago "  has  long  stood  in  the  foremost  rank.  His  speciality  of  inves- 
tigation occupied — "  a  period  of  more  than  forty  years,  twelve  of 
which  were  passed  in  countries  of  which  the  Malay  is  the  vernacular 
or  the  popular  language,  and  ten  in  the  compilation  of  materials ;" — 
of  which  a  recent50  "Dissertation"  embodies  not  merely  the  pre- 
cious ethnographical  issue ;  but,  through  his  method  of  analysis  and 
depth  of  logic,  superadded  to  vast  practical  knowledge  of  his  theme 
— combined  with  sterling  common  sense,  its  author  has  produced 
what,  in  my  individual  opinion,  must  become  the  model  text-book, 

correct  in  deciding  that  Felis  domestica  can  neither  be  referred  to  this  species,  nor  to  the 
Felis  catus  found  wild  in  the  forests  of  Europe."  {Recent  Freshwater  Mollusca,  which  are 
common  to  North  America  and  Europe,  Boston  Jour,  of  Nat.  Hist.,  Jan.  1844,  pp.  6-7.) 

48  Outlines  (supra,  p.  102),  I,  p.  46.  "  Multse  terricoiis  linguae,  coelestibus  una,"  is  another 
way  of  stating  such  axiom.  How  did  this  last  writer  know  that  people  do  talk  one  language 
in  heaven?  Can  he  show  us  whether  the  "dead"  have  speech  at  all?  During  some  gene- 
rations, the  Sorbonne,  at  Paris,  discussed,  in  schoolboys'  themes,  a  coherent  enigma,  viz., 
An  sancti  resurgant  cum  intestinis — not  a  less  difficult  problem  for  such  youths'  pedagogues  ! 

50  A  Grammar  and  Dictionary  of  the  Malay  Language,  with  a  preliminary  Dissertation ;  2 
vols.  8vo.,  London,  1852.     Our  citations  are  from  I.  pp.  35-6,  128-9. 


424  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

to  sincere  students  of  comparative  philology.  Here  science  feels 
itself  relieved  from  verbal  transcendentalism,  so  sublime  that  it  is 
meaningless,  in  Avhich  the  hybrid  school  of  Anglo-German  ethnolo- 
gists delights :  and  this  volume,  at  any  rate,  does  not  "  teach  gram- 
mar as  if  there  were  no  language,  geography  as  if  there  were  no 
earth."  Mr.  Crawfurd, — unlike  some  of  his  English  contemporaries 
who,  grouping  into  little  catalogues  all  the  tongues  known  or  un- 
known upon  earth,  of  which  it  is  materially  impossible  that  any  one 
man's  brain,  or  lifetime,  could  gather  even  the  rudiments,  proclaim 
that  " philology  proves  the  unity"  of  human  origins — Mr.  Crawfurd 
thoroughly  understands  his  subject,  and  writes  so  that  even  ourselves 
can  understand  him. 

"  There  exists  in  Java,  as  in  Northern  and  Southern  India,  in  Cey- 
lon, in  Birma,  and  Siam,  an  ancient  recondite  language,  but  it  is  not, 
as  in  those  countries,  any  longer  the  language  of  law  and  religion, 
but  a  mere  dead  tongue.  This  language  goes  under  the  name  of 
Kawi,  a  word  which  means  'narrative,'  or  'tale,'  and  is  not  the  spe- 
cific name  of  any  national  tongue.  Most  probably  it  is  a  corruption 
of  the  Sanscrit  kavya,  '  a  narration.'  In  Java  there  are  found  many 
inscriptions,  both  on  brass  and  stone,  the  great  majority  of  which, 
on  examination,  are  found  to  consist  of  various  ancient  modifications 
of  the  present  written  character."  *******<<  Some  writers 
have  supposed  the  Kawi  to  be  a  foreign  tongue,  introduced  into  Java 
at  some  unknown  epoch,  but  there  is  no  ground  for  this  notion,  as 
its  general  accordance  with  the  ordinary  language  plainly  shows. 
Independent  of  its  being  the  language  of  inscriptions,  it  is,  also,  that 
of  the  most  remarkable  literary  productions  of  the  Javanese,  among 
which,  the  most  celebrated  is  the  Bratayuda,  or  '  war  of  the  descend- 
ants of  Barat,'  a  kind  of  abstract  of  the  Hindu  Mahabarat."  *  *  * 
(probable  date,  about  a.  d.  1195).  In  it,  "near  80  parts  in  100,  or 
four-fifths  of  the  Kawi,  are  modern  Javanese."  *****  ""When, 
therefore,  it  is  considered  that  the  Kawi  is  no  longer  the  language 
of  law  or  religion,  but  merely  a  dead  language,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
understand  how  it  comes  to  be  so  little  understood ;  while,  in  deci- 
phering inscriptions,  the  difficulty  is  enhanced  by  an  obsolete  cha- 
racter." *  *  *  *  "Kawi  is  only  an  antiquated  Javanese." 

"  The  illustrious  philosopher,  linguist,  and  statesman,  the  late  Ba- 
ron William  Humboldt,  has,  in  his  large  work  on  the  Kawi  of  Java, 
expressed  the  opinion  that  the  Tagala  of  the  Philippines  is  the  most 
perfect  living  specimen  of  that  Malayan  tongue,  which,  with  other 
writers,  he  fancies  to  have  been  the  parental  stock  from  which  all 
the  other  tongues  of  the  brown  race  in  the  Eastern  Archipelago,  the 
Philippines,  the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  and  even  the  language  of  Ala- 


THE     FOLTGENISTS.  425 

dagascar,  have  sprung.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  this  hypothesis, 
maintained  with  much  ingenuity,  must  have  originated  in  this  emi- 
nent scholar  s  practical  unacquaintance  ivith  any  one  language  of  the 
many  which  came  under  his  consideration ;  and  that,  had  he  possessed 
the  necessary  knowledge,  the  mere  running  over  the  pages  of  any 
Philippine  dictionary  would  have  satisfied  him  of  the  error  of  his 
theory.  I  conclude,  then,  by  expressing  my  conviction  that,  as  far  as 
the  evidence  yielded  by  a  comparison  of  the  Tagala,  Bisaya,  and 
Pampanga  languages  with  the  Malay  and  Javanese  goes,  there  is  no 
more  ground  for  believing  that  the  Philippine  and  Malayan  languages 
have  a  common  origin,  than  for  concluding  that  Spanish  and  Portu- 
guese  are  Semitic  languages,  because  they  contain  a  few  hundred 
words  of  Arabic,  or  that  the  Welsh  and  Irish  are  of  Latin  origin,  because 
they  contain  a  good  many  words  of  Latin ;  or  that  Italian  is  of  Gothic 
origin,  because  it  contains  a  far  greater  number  of  words  of  Teutonic 
origin  than  any  Philippine  language  does  of  Malay  and  Javanese."51 

How  Crawfurd  disposes  of  the  Malayan  tongues,  segregating  this 
group  victoriously  from  all  others,  has  been  previously  indicated  in  M. 
Maury's  chapter,  [ante.  pp.  79-80].  Our  purpose  is  answered  by 
publishing,  in  the  said  chapter,  proofs  that  linguistic  science  has  pro- 
gressed considerably  since  1836,  when  the  disquisition  on  the  "Kawi- 
sprache"  was  written ;  and  that,  while  to  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt  is 
gratefully  accorded  the  highest  position  in  philology  as  it  stood  20 
years  ago,  it  is  injustice  to  the  memory  of  a  great  man  to  quote  his 
authority  as  tantamount  to  a  finality,  when  he  himself  (were  he  now 
alive)  would  have  kept  pace  with  the  latest  discoveries  in  science,  as 
when,  —  to  his  honor  be  it  recognized — -he  was  the  first  qualified 
critic,  out  of  France,  to  welcome  and  promote  Champollion-le-Jeune's 
hieroglyphical  decipherings ; 52  unappalled  himself,  if  others  were  not, 
at  the  storm  which  ignorance  and  superstition  everywhere  had  raised 
against  the  immortal  Frenchman. 

It  is  to  the  surviving  brother  that  Ideler  dedicates  his  work — 
"Alexandra  ab  Humboldt,  German orum  quotquot  fuere,  sunt,  erunt- 
que  decori  sacrum."     In  his  own  person,  the  nonogenerian  patriarch 

61  See  also  The  Westminster  Review,  No.  xviii,  April,  1856;  London  ed.,  Art.  iii.  on  "Types 
of  Mankind;"  pp.  373-5.  In  thanking  the  reviewer  for  the  fairness  of  his  critique  upon 
our  work,  let  me  point  out  two  oversights  contained  in  his  obliging  article:  1st. — (p.  361) 
Prof.  Agassiz  never  created  a  "  Hottentot"  realm ;  but  merely  included  a  Hottentot  Fauna 
in  his  "African"  realm  (see  Types,  p.  lxxvii.) :  2d. — (p.  367)  by  referring,  as  I  have  done, 
to  Morton's  Illustrated  System  of  Human  Anatomy  (p.  151),  he  will  find  that  the  Doctor 
wrote  "a  climate  as  cold  as  Ireland,"  not  Iceland:  so  that  there  remains  no  "double  mis 
take,"  except  the  pair  above  committed  by  the  reviewer. 

52  Ideler,  Hermapion  (supra,  note  17) ;  chap.  XXXI,  "  Lettre  de  M.  le  Baron  Guillaume 
de  Humboldt  a  M.  Champollion." 


426  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

of  science  seems  likely  to  realize  Flouren's  proposed  law,53  viz :  that 
the  true  length  of  human  life  should  not  fall  below  one  hundred  years : 
and  certainly  there  lives  no  man  to  whom  mankind  owe  a  more  fer- 
vent tribute  of  good  wishes.  Others  are  better  qualified  than  the 
present  writer  to  show  how  ceaselessly  Baron  Alexander  de  Hum- 
boldt steps  onward,  day  by  day,  as  leader  in  multitudinous  fields  of 
Natural  Science ;  but  should  Egyptology  be  taken  as  the  criterion  of 
his  ever-progressing  knowledge,  then  we  need,  in  order  to  plant 
some  pickets  along  tbe  route,  but  to  re-open  his  Cosmos?*  and  to 
peruse  some  of  Lepsius's55  and  Brugsch's  writings.56 

Nevertheless,  supposing  that  we  take  a  step  backwards  of  some  47 
years  from  this  day,  when  Baron  de  Humboldt  stood  already  at  the 
meridian  of  his  glorious  life,  and  open  the  beautiful  Introduction 
with  which,  in  1810,  he  prefaced  the  "Vues  des  Cordilleras,57  we 
perceive  how,  at  that  day  —  one  generation  and  a  half  ago, — he  felt 
overjoyed  at  having  then  lived  to  witness  the  appearance  of  the  great 
French  work,  the  "Description  de  l'Egypte,"  fruit  of  Napoleon 
Bonaparte's  eastern  campaigns  of  1778-1800, — which  grand  folios, 
except  for  architectural  designs  of  ancient,  and  excellent  views  and 
disquisitions  of  modern  Egypt,  have,  since  Champollion's  era,  1822- 
32,  become,  arehseologically  speaking,  almost  so  much  waste  paper. 
Yet,  at  that  time  (to  most  men  under  fifty,  in  this  our  XLXth 
century,  remote  day),  Alexander  von  Humboldt  had  already  arrived 
at  the  following  philosophical  conclusions  about  the  "  unity  of  the 
human  species." 

"Le  problem  e  de  la  premiere  population  de  l'Amerique  n'est  plus 
du  ressort  de  l'histoire,  que  les  questions  sur  l'origine  des  plantes  et 
des  animaux  et  sur  la  distribution  des  germes  organiques  ne  sont  du 
ressort  des  science  naturelles.  L'histoire,  en  remontant  aux  epoques 
les  plus  reculees  [which,  in  A.  D.  1810,  meant  only  to  about  1000  years 
before  Christ;  inasmuch  as  those  revelations,  on  some  8000  years  pre- 
viously to  the  latter  era,  derived  since  from  the  petroglyphs  of  the  Nile, 
the  Euphrates,  and  the  Tigris,  had  not  been  dreamed  of,  much  less  com- 
menced'], nous  montre  presque  toutes  les  parties  du  globe  occupees 
par  des  hommes  qui  se  croient  aborigines,  parce  qu'ils  ignorent 
leur  filiation.     Au  milieu  d'une  multitude  de  peuples  qui  se  sont 

53  De  la  Longimlc  Surname  et  de  la  quantite  de  Vie  sur  le  globe;  Paris,  12mo,  1855,  p.  86, 
viz:  that  the  natural  length  of  animal  life  is  frve  times  the  time  it  takes  to  "unite  the  bones 
with  their  epiphyses;"  which  process,  in  man,  takes  effect  at  about  20  years  of  age. 

M  OiWs  Transl.,  II,  pp.  124-8. 

K  Briefe  aus  JEgypien,  JEthiopien,  §c,  Berlin,  1852;   "Vorwort." 

66  Reiseberichte  aus  JEgypien,  Berlin,  1855;  "Vorwort;"  and  Grammalica  Demotica,  1855. 

6'  Hcmboldt  et  Bomplakd,  Voyage,  Atlas  Pittoresque,  Paris,  folio,  1810. 


THE     POL  YGEISTISTS.  427 

succedes  et  meles  les  uns  aux  autres,  il  est  impossible  de  reconnoitre 
avec  exactitude  la  premiere  base  de  la  population,  cette  couclie 
primitive  au  dela  de  laquelle  commence  le  domaine  des  traditions 
cosmogoniques. 

"Les  nations  de  l'Amerique,  a  l'exception  de  celles  qui  avoisinent 
le  cercle  polaire,  forment  une  seule  race  caraeterisee  par  la  conforma- 
tion du  crane,  par  la  couleur  de  la  peau,  par  l'extreme  rarete  de  la 
barbe,  et  par  des  cbeveux  plats  et  lisses.  La  race  americaine  a  des 
rapports  tres-sensibles  avec  celle  des  peuples  mongoles  qui  renferme 
les  descendans  des  Hiong-nu,  connus  jadis  sous  le  nom  de  Huns,  les 
Kalkas,  les  Kalmucks,  et  les  Bourattes.  Des  observations  recentes 
ont  meme  prouve  que  non  seulement  les  babitants  a,  Unalaska,  mais 
aitssi  plusieurs  peuplades  de  l'Amerique  meridionale,  indiquent  par  des 
caracteres  ostCologiques  de  la  tete,  un  passage  de  la  race  americaine 
[not  across  the  Pacific  nor  the  Atlantic,  but  in  physiological  gradation], 
a.  la  race  mongole.  Lorsqu'on  aura  mieux  etudie  les  bommes  bruns 
de  l'Afrique  et  cet  essaim  de  peuples  qui  babitent  1'interieure  et  le 
nord-est  de  l'Asie,  que  des  voyageurs  systematiques  designent  vague- 
ment  sous  les  noms  de  Tartars  et  de  Tscboucles,  les  races  cancasienne, 
mongole,  americaine  [this  last  group  of  humanity  was  explored  30  years 
later,  and  to  Baron  de  Humboldt's  satisfaction,58  by  Morton,  in  his 
"Crania  Americana"],  malaye  et  negre  paroitront  moins  isolees 
[Morton's  school  now  think  the  contrary  established],  et  Ton  recomioitra, 
dans  cette  grande  famille  du  genre  bumain,  un  seul  type  organique 
modifie  par  des  circonstances  qui  nous  resteront  peut-etre  a  jamais 
inconnues."  *  *  *  "JSTous  ne  connaissons  jusqu'ici  aueun  idiome  de 
l'Amerique  qui,  plus  que  les  autres,  semble  se  lier  a  un  des  groupes 
nombreux  de  langue  asiatiques,  africaines,  on  europeennes."59 

Indeed,  as  tbe  same  illustrious  writer  says  elsewbere,60  these  dis- 
cussions, which  we  call  neiv,  "sur  l'unite  de  l'espece  humaine  et  de 
ses  deviations  d'un  type  primitif,"  and  about  the  peopling  of  America, 
agitated  the  minds  of  its  first  Spanish  historians,  Acosta,  Oviedo, 
G-arcia,  &c, — on  all  which  consult  the  learned  compendium  of  Dr. 
McCulloh.61 

As  a  final  illustration  of  tbe  eagle-eye  with  which  Humboldt  seizes 
each  discoveiy  of  physical  science  as  it  is  made,  the  German  and 
French  editions  of  Kosmos  itself  furnish  a  happy  instance.    The  first 

63  See  the  Baron's  congratulatory  letter  to  Dr.  Morton,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  xxxiv-v. 
69  Vues  des  Cordilleras,  pp.  vii-viii,  x. 

60  JSxamen  critique  de  I'histoire  de  la  Qeographie  du  Nouveau  Continent  el  des  progris  de 
V Aslronomie  naulique  aux  15me  et  16me  siecles,  Paris,  1836,  I,  "Considerations,"  pp.  5,  G. 

61  Researches,  Philosophical  and  Antiquarian,  concerning  the  Aboriginal  History  of  America, 
Baltimore,  1829,  "Introduction,"  and  passim. 


428  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

volume  of  the  former  appeared  in  Germany  during  April,  1843.  "II 
fut  considere  (says  M.  Faye,)62  comme  l'expression  fidele  de  1'etat  des 
sciences  physiques."  In  that  year  but  11  planets  were  known  to 
astronomers.  But,  by  1846,  on  the  issue  of  the  French  version,  M. 
Hencke,  of  Driessen,  having  discovered  another,  it  became  incumbent 
upon  its  translator  to  count  12  :  —  "Mais  les  appreciations  de  M.  de 
Humboldt  n'en  ont  recu  aucune  atteinte ;  au  contraire,  cette  decou- 
verte  leur  apporte  une  force  nouvelle,  une  verification  de  plus."  How 
many  more  have  turned  up  since,  I  do  not  know.  Prof.  Riddell 
already  enumerated  "  thirty- eight  known  asteroids,63  at  New  Orleans 
in  February  1856.  Can  any  one  suppose  that  Baron  de  Humboldt, 
residing  in  the  centre  of  royal  science  at  Potsdam,  is  not  at  this  hour 
more  precisely  informed  ? 

Consequently,  if  my  individual  convictions  happen  to  differ  from  the 
ethnological  doctrine  of  Baron  de  Humboldt,  I  wish  critics  to  compre- 
hend that  I  am  fully  aware  of  the  enormous  disparity  existing  between 
our  respective  mental  capacities  and  attainments ;  and  whilst,  on  my 
side,  the  consciousness  of  his  superiority  serves  to  increase  my  admi- 
ration, I  cannot  but  congratulate  myself  that, — however  other  great 
authorities  may  be  found  to  agree  with,  or  to  contradict  him,  on  the 
question  of  human  monogenism  or  polygenism — in  rejecting  "myths," 
"fiction,"  and  "pretended  tradition,"  I  find  myself  merely  and 
implicitly  following  in  the  wake  of  Alexander  von  Humboldt. 

So  high,  indeed,  is  my  individual  reverence  for  the  authority  of 
Humboldt,  that,  in  the  present  essay,  my  part  chiefly  confines  itself 
to  setting  forth  his  ethnological  opinions  in  juxtaposition  to  other 
great  men's;  leaving  the  unprejudiced  reader  to  form  his  own  judg- 
ment, as  to  the  side  on  which  scientific  truth  holds  the  preponde- 
rance. With  the  ethics,  said  to  be  involved  in  such  problem,  I  do 
not  particularly  concern  myself:  my  own  notions  in  this  matter 
being  similar  to  those  of  my  lamented  collaborator  Dr.  Henry  S. 
Patterson  f*  viz :  that,  inasmuch  as  the  religious  dogma  of  man- 
kind's Unity  of  origin  has  never  yet  instigated  the  different  races 
of  men  to  act  toward  each  other  like  "brothers,"  it  might  still 
occur,  in  a  distant  future,  that,  wben  the  antagonistic  doctrine  of 
Diversity  shall  be  recognized  as  attesting  one  of  Nature's  organic 
laws,  such  change  of  theory  may  possibly  superinduce  some  altera- 
tion of  practice;  and  then  that  men  of  distinct  lineages  may  become, 
as  I  desire,  more  really-humane  in  their  mutual  intercourse.  If  under 
the  monogenistic  hypothesis,  mankind  cannot  well  be  worse  off 

62  Cosmos,  Tr.  e<J.,  1846,  "  Avertissement  du  Traducteur,"  pp.  iii. 

63  Address  read  before  the  New  Orleans  Academy  of  Sciences,  1856,  p.  2. 

64  "Memoir  of  Samuel  George  Morton,"  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  li — lii. 


THE     POL  YGE  NISTS.  429 

than  they  are  now,  some  hopes  of  eventual  melioration  may,  per- 
haps, be  indulged  in,  by  sustainers  of  the  polygenistic  point  of  view. 

Humboldt's  language  on  this  question  admits  of  no  equivoque. — 
"But,  in  my  opinion,  more  powerful  reasons  militate  in  favor  of  the 
unity  of  the  human  species."  *  *  *  "In  sustaining  the  unity  of 
the  human  species,  we  reject,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  the  dis- 
tressing distinction  of  superior  and  of  inferior  races:"  —  and  he 
terminates  by  citing  his  brother's  beautiful  aphorism65 — "'An  idea 
that  reveals  itself  athwart  history,  whilst  extending  daily  its  salutary 
empire,  an  idea  which,  better  than  any  other,  proves  the  fact  so  often 
contested,  but  still  oftener  misunderstood,  of  the  general  perfecti- 
bility of  the  species,  is  the  idea  of  humanity.' " 

I  am  unconscious,  certainly,  of  a  disposition  to  deny  the  historical 
fact  last  indicated ;  neither  do  I  question  the  improvableness  of  every 
race  of  man,  each  in  the  ratio  of  its  own  grade  of  organization,  nor 
doubt  the  beneficial  influence  of  such  modern  belief  wherever  it 
can  be  implanted :  but,  not  on  that  account  do  I  consider  a  Tasma- 
nian,  a  Fuegian,  a  Kalmuk,  an  Orang-benua,  or  a  Bechuana,  to 
descend  from  the  same  blood  lineage  as  the  noblest  of  living 
Teutons: — -whose  loftiness  of  soul  gives  utterance  to  an  "idea," 
such  as  that  which  no  education  could  instil  into  the  brains  of  the 
above-named  five,  among  many  other  races.  The  very  idea  itself 
is  purely  "  Caucasian ;"  and  as  such,  together  with  true  civilization, 
serves  the  more  strongly  to  mark  distinctions  of  mental  organism, 
amongst  the  various  groups  of  historical  humanity. 

To  the  second  proposition,  recognizing,  with  De  Gl-obineau,66  and 
with  Pott,67  the  existence  of  "superior  and  of  inferior  races"  as 
simply  a  fact  in  nature,  I  will  submit  some  objections  as  we  proceed: 
at  the  same  time  that  I  can  perceive  nothing  "depressing,"  "  cheer- 
less," or  "  distressing,"  in  any  fact,  humanly  comprehensible,  of  the 
Creator's  laws,  inscrutable  to  human  reason  though  they  may  yet  be. 

But  it  is  the  accuracy  of  the  first  assertion,  viz:  "the  unity  of  the 
human  species,"  that,  without  some  ventilation  of  the  Baron's  pre- 
cise meaning,  I  cannot  accept ;  for  the  same  reasons  which,  in  the 
Parisian  discussion  before  alluded  to  {supra,  p.  404),  M.  d'Eichthal 
adduces  in  his  report  to  the  Societe  Ethnologique. 

And  here,  in  order  to  meet  ungenerous  or  misapplied  criticism, 

65  A.  de  Humboldt,  Cosmos,  French  ed.  ;  I,  pp.  423,  430 ;  and  p.  579,  note  43 ;  quoting 
W.  de  Humboldt,  On  the  Kawi  tongue,  III,  p.  426.  Compare  Olle's  Iransl.,  I,  pp.  352,  358  ; 
with  Sabine's,  pp.  351,  355-6. 

66  Inegalite  des  Races  humaines  (supra,  p.  188). 

67  Die  Ungleichheit  menschlicher  Rassen  hauptfdchlich  vom  Sprachwissenschaftlichen  Sland- 
punkte,  &c— Halle,  8to,  1856. 


430  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

let  me  mention,  once  for  all,  that,  wherever  memory  recalls  to  mind 
a  given  writer  who,  in  the  printed  emission  of  his  thoughts,  has 
sustained  views  hearing  directly  on  a  theme  hefore  me  (of  sufficient 
merit  to  demand  re-perusal),  it  is  my  habit  always  to  reproduce  his 
ideas  in  his  own  words,  in  preference  to  giving  those  ideas  as  my 
own.     Apart  from  literary  honesty  (the  violation  of  which  is  looked 
upon  by  most  litterateurs  as  a  venial  offence),  there  accrues  positive 
advantage  from  such  practice ;  because,  "a  motion  being  seconded," 
the  reader  is  thereby  presented  with  two  or  more  men's  opinions  in 
lieu  of  one.     It  is  to  the  late  Letronne  I  owe  this  system.     Calling 
one  day  upon  him,  in  1845,  at  the  Archives,  in  Paris,  to  ask  for  some 
information    relative   to  his    Cours   d' archeologie   egyptienne,   at  the 
College  de  France,  where  my  attendance  was  ever  punctual,63  he 
continued,  during  our  long  interview,  to  tumble  down,  from  his 
well-stocked  library,  work  after  work,  whence,  whilst  talking,  he 
made  frequent  extracts.     Struck  with  his  incessant  laboriousness, 
curiosity  bade  me  observe,  that  the  subject  must  be  very  important, 
to   require   so   many  references.      "Au   contraire,"   he   exclaimed, 
"tres  insignifiiant :  c'est  que  j'ai  a  faire  une  petite  reponse  a  M. 
*  *  *,  de  L'Institut."     To  my  remark,  that,  for  such  purpose,  there 
hardly  needed  so  much  expenditure  of  time  and  fatigue  on  the  part 
of  a  Letronne,  he  favored  me  with  the  following  characteristic 
observation.    Said  he,  in  effect — whenever  he  happened  to  remember 
that  an  author,  ancient  or  modern,  had  treated  on  the  topic  in  hand, 
he  always  quoted  him — 1st,  because  this  process  established  such 
author's   priority;    2d,  because  it  proved  that  he  (Letronne)  was 
conversant  with  the  literature  of  such  subject:  and, — when  I  sug- 
gested that  he  might,  in  consequence,  be  deemed,  by  strangers,  to 
be  a  mere  compiler — he  broke  forth  with,  "  Compilateur !    If  I  had 
nothing  new  to  say,  over  and  above  all  these  citations,  why  should  I 
write?"     This  lesson,  I  trust,  was  not  lost  upon  me;  wherefore  my 
extracts  are  continued. 

"M.  Schcelcher69  [one  of  the  members,  no  less  than  the  most  cele- 
brated of  French  abolitionists]  has,  moreover,  told  you  himself  that 
he  professes  the  principle  (let  us  rather  say  the  dogma)  of  the  equal- 
ity, complete  and  absolute,  of  the  human  races.  To  him,  in  view 
of  this  great  faith  of  unity,  all  shades,  gradations,  distinctions,  which 
may  exist  between  different  races,  are  as  if  they  were  not.  He  does 
not  precisely  deny  them ;  but  he  attenuates  them  as  much  as  possible, 
he  leaves  them  in  the  shade,  he  takes  no  account  of  them." 

68  Otia  JEgyptiaca,  Dedication,  and  pp.  16,  23-4,  26,  77. 

69  Author,  amid  various  works,  of  a  very  correct  estimate  of  modern  Egypt,  as  it  appeared 
politically  about  1844,  and  socially  to  the  present  hour. 


THE     POLTGENISTS  431 

"We  do  not  fear,"  then  comments  M.  d'Eichthal,  "to  reproach 
our  colleague  with  exaggerations  of  this  doctrine.  His  opinions,  if 
taken  in  all  their  rigor  [why  not,  prima  facie,  those  of  Humboldt 
also],  would  attain  to  nothing  less  than  the  annihilation  of  ethnology 
itself ;  because  ethnology  is  but  the  classification  of  races  according 
to  the  characteristical  differences  that  distinguish  them.  Efface  or 
throw  aside  these  differences,  and  the  name  of  ethnological  science 
has  no  longer  any  meaning.  Even  the  question  at  this  moment 
occupying  us  ceases  to  possess  any  value  !  All  human  races  being 
supposed  to  be  one,  every  discussion,  relative  to  those  characters 
which  might  distinguish  them,  becomes  ipso  facto  superfluous." 

It  appears  to  me  that,  in  M.  d'Eichthal's  argument,  the  dilemma 
is  well  put.  Where,  in  fact,  can  be  the  utility  of  ethnological  in- 
quiries, if  (say,  in  America)  we  set  forth  with  an  Anglicized  Hebrew 
myth — which  has  become  metamorphosed,  amongst  Indo-European 
nations,  into  traditionary  credence  as  to  fact — that  all  mankind 
descend,  in  a  straight  line,  from  "a  single  pair"?  Except  as 
orthodox  repellers  of  free  investigation,  the  unity-men  have  really 
no  place  in  ethnological  science ;  unless,  with  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt, they  use  the  term  "unity"  in  a  philosophical  (or  "parliament- 
ary") sense,  and  not  in  the  one  currently  understood  by  theologers. 


PAET  I. 

To  ascertain  the  likelihood  of  the  stability  of  such  views,  it  will 
be  convenient  to  classify  the  acceptations  in  which  different  authors 
use  the  term  "Unity,"  as  applicable  to  Mankind,  into  three  cate- 
gories, viz :  — 

A.  —  Unity  as  a  theological  dogma. 

B.  — ■  Unity  as  a  zoological  fact. 

C.  —  Unity  as  a  moral,  or  metaphysical,  doctrine. 

With  regard  to  the  first  two  (A  and  B),  it  is  not  often  easy  to 
separate,  into  just  proportions,  the  value  attached  to  either  by  many 
able  writers, — so  completely  have  they  fused  these  two  distinct  ideas 
into  one  mass.  The  majority,  setting  forth  with  a  preconceived 
notion  (derived  from  an  early  education  that  they  do  not  possess 
the  moral  courage  to  analyze,  still  more  rarely  to  shake  off),  that  all 
the  races  of  men  descend  from  a  primordial  male  and  female  pair, 
misnamed  in  English  "Adam  and  Eve,"70  have,  often  unconsciously, 

»  Hebrew  Text,  Genesis  II,  23.     Here  occur  two  distinct  words,  (of  which  the  contrast  is 


432  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

perceived  in  nature  nothing  but  the  reflex  of  their  own  mental 
assumption ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  have  seized  only  upon  analogies 
confirmatory  of  their  own  sentimental  bias ;  discarding  altogether, 
or  leaving  out  of  sight,  those  natural  and  historical  facts  that  mili- 
tate against  it. 

Foremost  and  highest,  if  not  perhaps  the  earliest,  among  these, 
stand  two  contemporaries,  Blumenbach71  and  Zimmermann ;  the 
former  of  whom  is  justly  acknowledged  to  be  the  founder  of  anthro- 
pological science,  as  well  as  of  cranioscopy.  The  latter  may  be 
reckoned  among  the  first  who  established  correct  principles  of 
animal  geographical  distribution. 

It  is  not,  however  (as  usually  supposed),  in  his  large  Decades 
Oraniorum,  that  Blumenbach  gave  free  utterance  to  his  opinions. 
These  are  contained  in  sundry  duodecimos,  some  of  which  have 
passed  through  three  improved  editions.  Those  that  I  first  read 
belonged  once  to  Cuvier,  and  were  indicated  to  me  by  the  accom- 
plished Librarian  of  the  Museum  d'Histoire  Naturelle,  my  friend  M. 
Lemercier.  The  following  extract  sums  up  his  argument  upon 
human  "Unity,"72  which  he  had  previously  formulated  into  a  doc- 
trine— "  JJnica  saltern  est  totius  generis  humani  Species."  His  opening 
sentence  sufficiently  establishes  the  mental  preoccupations  I  have 
signalized  above. 

"  Ardua  quidem,  sed  cum  ad  vindicandam  Sacri  codicis  fidem,  turn 
ob  lucem  quam  universse  generis  humani  imo  et  reliquas  naturali 
historise  impertit,  utilissima  et  dignissima  disquisitio.  Malitia  qui- 
dem, negligentia  et  novitatis  studium  posteriori  opinioni  favebant. 
Plures  erim  humani  generis  species  inde  a  Juliani  Imperatoris  tem- 
poribus  [Opera,  p.  192)  iis  egregie  arridebant  [i.e.,  Symon  Tyssot, 

effaced  in  king  James'  version)  for  "man,"  viz:  A-DaM  and  AISA:  whilst  again  the  female 
AISAaH,  just  formed  out  of  "  the-red-man's"  rib,  does  not  receive  the  name  of  KAaiUaH 
(life)  —  vulgarice  KAaVaH,  and  still  more  vulgarly  "Eve"  in  English  —  until  Chap.  Ill,  v. 
20.     See  some  mythological  analogies  in  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  563,  573. 

n  With  exquisite  taste,  my  friend,  Mr.  J.  Barnard  Davis,  has  resuscitated  the  portrait 
of  the  illustrious  German,  and,  flanked  on  a  medallion  by  that  of  his  successor  Dr.  Morton, 
it  adorns  that  beautiful  and  truly-scientific  work,  Crania  Britannica,  London,  1856;  the 
first  decade  of  which  I  owe  to  its  author's  kind  regard.  Appertaining  properly  to  the 
specialties  of  our  collaborators  Dr.  Meigs  and  Prof.  Leidy,  I  refrain  from  comments  on  a 
great  hook  which,  vindicating  the  rights  of  Anatomy  to  priority  of  respect  in  the  study  of 
mankind,  will  do  good  service  in  rescuing  ethnology  from  a  too-excliTsive  reliance  upon 
Philology, — as  understood,  I  mean  to  say,  by  Anglo-German  monogenists ;  but  not  when,  as 
in  M.  Maury's  chapter  I  of  this  volume,  it  is  shown  how  perfectly  true  philology  attains  to 
the  same  philosophical  results  as  all  other  sciences  bearing  upon  man. 

72  Blumenbach,  De  Generis  Humani  varietate  nativa,  Gottingse,  1781;  pp.  31,  47, — this 
being  the  2d  edition  of  a  paper  printed  5  years  previously ;  and  afterwards  considerably 
enlarged  and  altered  in  a  3d  edition,  Gottingoe,  1795. 


THE     POLYGEKISTS.  433 

and  Voltaire]  quorum  Sacri  codicis  fidem  suspectam  reddere  intere- 
rat.  Facilius  porro  erat  (Ethiopes  aut  Arnericse  imberbes  incolas 
prinio  statim  intuitu  pro  diversis  speciebus  habere,  quam  in  corporis 
humani  structuram  inquirere,  anatomicos  et  itinerum  nurnerosos 
auctores  consulere,  horumque  fidera  aut  levitatem  studiose  perpen- 
dere,  e  naturalis  historise  universo  ambitu  parallela  conferre  exempla, 
tumque  demum  judicium  ferre  varietatis  caussas  scr atari.  Ita  v.  c. 
famosus  ille  Theophrastus  Paracelsus  (lepidum  caput !)  primus  ni 
fallor  capere  non  potuit  quomodo  Ameriaani73  ut  reliqui  bominis  ab 
Adamo  genus  ducere  possunt,  ideoque  ut  brevi  se  expediret  negotio 
duos  Adamos  a  Deo  creates  statuit,  Asiaticum  alteram,  alteram 
Americanum  (De  philosoph.  occulen.  I.  I)." 

From  tbe  profound  "Theology  of  Nature"  by  my  venerable  friend 
M.  Hercule  Straus-Durckheim,74  whose  long  researches  in  compara- 
tive anatomy,  at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  vindicate  Creative  Power 
from  vulgar  anthropomorphous  assimilations,  I  learn  that:  —  "As 
concerns  zoology,  it  was  natural  that  the  first  classifiers — among 
whom  Linnaeus,  who  is  with  reason  considered  the  true  founder  of 
science,  beyond  all  distinguished  himself — were  equally  unable  to 
employ  other  than  exterior  characteristics ;  and  therefore,  soon  per- 
ceiving that  these  data  were  insufficient,  the  successors  of  Linn^us, 
and  of  Buffon,  adhered  to  seeking  the  veritable  principles  of  this 
science  in  the  study  of  the  Anatomy,  and  of  the  Physiology  of 
animals,  which  alone  could  make  them  known.  It  is  thus  that 
Daubenton,  collaborator  of  Buffon,  and  Blumenbach,  pupil  of  the 
illustrious  Linn^us,  were  the  first  to  cling  to  the  study  of  these  two 
sciences,  in  order  to  make  them  the  basis  of  Zoology ;  a  study  which 
our  celebrated  Cuvieb  afterwards  brought  to  a  very  high  degree  of 
perfection  in  his  Legons  d'Anatomie  comparee :  that  work  which 
forms,  since  its  publication  in  1805,  the  fundamental  basis,  not 
merely  of  all  works  of  Anatomy  and  comparative  physiology  that 
have  subsequently  appeared,  but  likewise  that  of  all  treatises  on 
Zoology,  properly  so-called,  which  discuss  the  classification  of 
animals.  *  *  *  It  was  he  (Linn^us)  who  created  nomenclature  and 

13  It  is  to  a  Jewish  Rabbi,  nevertheless,  as  might  have  been  expected,  that  orthodoxy 
owes  the  best  proofs  of  the  colonization  of  America  by  lineal  descendants  of  Adam  and 
Eve.  In  1650,  R.  Menasseh  printed  his  "Spes  Israelis,"  in  which,  following  the  monstrous 
fables  of  Montesini,  he  discovered  true  Indian  Jews  upon  the  Cordilleras!  (Basnaqe, 
Hist,  and  Relig.  of  the  Jews,  transl.  Taylor:  London,  fo).  1708;  pp.  470-87).  The  He- 
brews, however,  have  settled  in  many  parts  of  America  since ;  ever  preserving  their  dis- 
tinctness from  all  races,  white,  negro,  aboriginal  Indian,  or  Sinico-mongol :  the  most 
curious  instance  being  cited  by  Davis  (Crania  Britdnnka,  p.  8,  note)  in  the  Israelitish 
colony  at  Antioquia,  near  Bogota. 

«  Theologie  de  la  Nature,  Paris,  8vo,  3  vols,  (chez  l'auteur,  Rue  des  Fosse's-Saint-Victor, 
14)  — 1852:  III,  pp.  247-8. 

28 


434  THE    MONOGENISTS     AND 

style  in  natural  history,  giving  to  each  species  two  names ;  one, 
more  particularly  substantive,  forming  its  generic  Name;  and  the 
secoucl,  adjective,  indicating  the  Species,  and  constituting  its  specific 
Name."  It  becomes  in  consequence  unnecessary,  after  this  historical 
sketch,  for  us  to  begin  earlier  than  the  lifetime  of  the  Gottingen 
philosopher. 

To  Blumenbach,  however,  the  action  of  "climate"  was  an  ade- 
quate explanation  of  the  "five  varieties"  he  distinguishes  in  man. 
He  believed  that,  "homines  nigri  subinde  albescunt!"  also,  "et  albi 
e  contra  nigrescunt  !"75  At  a  later  date,  he  fortified  this  view  in  a 
treatise  entitled  "Ueber  die  Negern  insbesondre;"76  compiled  chiefly 
from  English  emancipation-sources,  and  sustaining  the  perfectibility 
of  negro  races,  with  specimens  of  their  poetry  and  literary  works, 
on  the  well-known  system  of  the  benevolent  Abbe  Gregoire. 

Very  similar  are  the  opinions  of  Zimmermann,77  although  advo- 
cated far  more  from  the  naturalist  than  the  theological  point  of 
view.  Whilst  he  struggles  to  indicate  the  narrow  geograpbical  cir- 
cumscription of  the  range  of  most  mammifers,  he  attributes  to  cli- 
mate, aliment,  &c,  such  wondrous  powers,  that,  according  to  him, 
a  hyena,  through  transplantation,  might,  in  some  generations,  become 
turned  into  a  wolf!  Kext  applying  these  principles  to  man,  Zim- 
mermann attempts  to  show  how  color  is  changed  by  climate,  heat 
producing  negroes  and  cold  Esquimaux;  cites  the  old  traveller 
Benjamin,  of  Tudela,  for  Jews  turning  black  in  Abyssinia;78  and 
credits  a  story  related  by  Caldanus,  how  once  he  saw,  a,t  Venice,  a 
negro  wbo,  brought  there  in  childhood,  had,  in  his  old  age,  become 
yellowish!19    Thus:  "The  white  man  can  become  black,  and  the 

75  Op.  cit.  2d  ed.,  pp.  56,  69,  72:  — 3d  ed.,  p.  51  seq. 

'6  Blumenbach,  Beytrcige  zur  Naiurgeschichte,  Gottingen,  12mo,  in  two  parts,  1806,  1811 ; 
pp.  73-97. 

77  Specimen  Zoologies  Geographicce  quadrupedum  domicilia  et  migrationes,  4to,  Lugduni  Bata- 
vorura,  1777;  of  which  I  use  the  French  translation — "Zoologie  GSographique,  lr  article, 
L 'Homme,"  Cassel,  8vo,  1784;  pp.  44,  131,  135,  189-90. 

78  See,  on  the  Falashas,  "Types  of  Mankind,"  pp.  122-3.  That  these  people  are  merely 
African  aborigines,  converted  to  a  pseudo-Judaism,  may  now  be  verified  through  their 
portraits  (Cf.  Lefebvke,  Voyage  en  Abyssinie,  1839-43;  Atlas  fol. — "Ukite,  femme  Fela- 
cha,  ag^e  de  40  ans" — whose  race  is  identical  with  those  of  many  other  non-Jewish  nations 
figured  in  the  same  excellent  work).  Besides,  Benan  has  abolished  any  imagined  philolo- 
gical connection,  in  the  clause,  that  the  speech  of  these  Fal&syan  "n'a  rien  de  semitique" 
(Hist,  des  Langues  Semiliques,  pp.  311-2).  Compare,  also,  Antoine  d'Abbadie,  Letter  to 
M.  Jomard,  on  the  "  Falacha,  Juifs  d' Abyssinie  (3  Nov.  1844):  Ce  type  existe  chez  les  Agaw 
de  l'Atala  et  du  Simen,  et  chez  les  Sidama.  B  nous  est  impossible  de  le  ramener  au  type 
juif.  La  langue  des  Falacha  est  la  meme  que  celle  qui  vient  de  s'^teindre  dans  le  Dembya." 
Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  de  GiograpMe,  Paris,  Juillet,  1845;  pp.  44,  72. 

79  What  was  believed  last  century  on  these  subjects,  even  by  physicians,  may  be  seen  in 
a  small  work  I  possess — "Trait*;  de  la  couleur  de  la  peau  humaine  en  general,  de  celle  des 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  435 

black  on  the  contrary  white,  and  this  change  is  again  carried  on 
through  the  different  degrees  of  heat  and  cold" — his  conclusion 
being  that  "man,  possessing  himself  thus  little  by  little  of  all  cli- 
mates, becomes,  through  their  influence,  here  a  Georgian,  there  a 
negro,  elsewhere  an  Eskimau  !" 

Next  in  order  should  follow  Lawrence,  could  one  readily  seize 
(through  the  variations  of  theory  manifest  in  different  editions  of 
his  work)  what  are  the  real  stand-points  of  genius  so  versatile.  He 
has  the  Protean  faculty  of  saying  one  thing  and  believing  another, 
interchangeably ;  and  may  be  quoted  either  on  the  unity  or  diversity 

negres  en  particulier,  et  de  la  metamorphose  d'une  de  ces  couleurs  dans  l'autre,  soit  de  nais- 
sance,  soit  accidentellement,"  by  M.  Le  Cat,  Doctor,  &c,  Amsterdam,  8vo,  1765.  No 
physiologist,  however,  disputes  that  disease  will,  more  or  less  temporarily,  change  the  color 
of  the  skin.  There  are  albino  negroes  as  well  as  while  elephants,  raccoons,  deer,  or  mice. 
On  these  points,  by  far  the  most  powerful  argument  is  the  late  Dr.  Charles  Caldwell's  anni- 
hilating review  of  an  "Essay  on  the  causes  of  the  variety  of  complexion  and  figure  in  the 
human  species;  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  S.  S.  Smith,  of  Princeton  Coll.,  N.  J.,  1810" — published, 
in  four  admirable  articles,  in  the  Philadelphia  "Portfolio,"  8vo,  1814;  vol.  iv.,  3d  series. 
See  particularly,  pp.  26-31,  259-271,  "the  case  of  Henry  Moss." 

Without  pretending  to  enter  into  discussions  in  which  none  but  physiologists  are  entitled 
to  respectful  attention,  let  me  refer  those  desiroxis  of  enlightenment  to  the  great  work  of 
Dr.  Prosper  Lucas  [Traits  philosophique  el  physiologique  de  Vheredile" nalurelle,  Paris,  1847, 
2  vols.  8vo)  for  every  example,  throughout  the  range  of  animate  nature,  bearing  upon  the 
laws  of  "  Inneile  and  Heredite'in  the  procreation  of  the  vital  mechanism." 

The  most  recent,  no  less  than  the  most  brilliant,  American  writer  of  the  day  on  "  Human 
Physiology,  statical  and  dynamical"  (New  York,  1856,  pp.  565-580),  seems  to  me  still  to 
lay  too  much  stress  upon  the  supposed  action  of  "climate"  on  the  coloration  of  the  human 
Bkin ;  and  inasmuch  as  Dr.  Draper's  ever-scientific  language  has  given  rise  to  pitiful 
absurdities  like  those  put  forth  in  an  article  appropriately  entitled  "The  Cooking  of  Men" 
[Harper's  Magazine,  Oct.,  1856),  it  may  be  well  to  counterbalance  such  exaggerations  of  his 
high  authority  by  the  following  paragraph  of  a  physiologist  certainly  not  less  eminent.  Da. 
Same.  Geo.  Morton  says  (Illustrated  System  of  Human  Anatomy,  Special,  General,  and 
Microscopic,  Philadelphia,  1849,  p.  151):  "It  is  a  common  opinion,  that  climate  alone  is 
capable  of  producing  all  those  diversities  of  complexion  so  remarkable  in  the  human  races. 
A  very  few  facts  may  suffice  to  show  that  such  cannot  be  the  case.  Thus,  the  negroes  of 
Van  Diemen's  Land,  who  are  among  the  blackest  people  on  the  earth,  live  in  a  climate  as 
cold  as  that  of  Ireland;  while  the  Indo-Chinese  nations,  who  live  in  tropical  Asia,  are  of  a 
brown  and  olive  complexion.  It  is  remarked,  by  Humboldt,  that  the  American  tribes  of 
the  equinoctial  region  have  no  darker  skin  than  the  mountaineers  of  the  Temperate  Zone. 
So  also  the  Puelchfe  of  the  Magellanic  plains,  beyond  the  fifty-fifth  degree  of  south  lati- 
tude, are  absolutely  darker  than  Abipones,  Tobas,  and  other  tribes,  who  are  many  degrees 
nearer  the  equator.  Again,  the  Charruas,  who  inhabit  south  of  the  Rio  de  la  Plata,  are 
almost  black,  whilst  the  Guaycas,  under  the  line,  are  among  the  fairest  of  the  American 
tribes.  Finally,  not  to  multiply  examples,  those  nations  of  the  Caucasian  race  which  have 
become  inhabitants  of  the  Torrid  Zone,  in  both  hemispheres,  although  their  descendants 
have  been  for  centuries,  and  in  Africa  for  many  centuries,  exposed  to  the  most  active 
influences  of  climate,  have  never,  in  a  solitary  instance,  exhibited  the  transformation  from 
the  Caucasian  to  a  negro  complexion.  They  become  darker,  it  is  true ;  but  there  is  a  point 
at  which  the  change  is  arrested.  Climate  modifies  the  human  complexion,  but  is  far  from 
being  the  cause  of  it." 


436  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

side,  accordingly  as  we  stumble  upon  a  given  edition  of  his  learned 
and  useful  book.  In  the  one  before  me,80  I  find  this  conclusion : 
"  5thly.  That  the  human  species,  therefore,  like  that  of  the  cow, 
sheep,  horse,  and  pig,  is  single ;  and  that  all  the  differences  which  it 
exhibits,  are  to  be  regarded  merely  as  varieties."  Alas  !  I  fear  that 
if  the  unity  of  mankind  cannot  be  sustained  upon  better  zoological 
or  analogical  grounds  than  this  supposed  singleness  of  species  of 
cows,  sheep,  horses,  or  even  pigs,  there  are  but  few  naturalists,  at 
the  present  day,  who  do  not  take  an  opposite  view. 

A  long  list  of  minor  writers  on  man,  exclusive  of  numerous 
theological  dilettanti — of  less  importance  than  the  Abbe  Frere81  or 
the  Abbe  Migne82 — might  here  be  introduced,  before  reaching  Eusebe 
de  Salles83  at  Marseilles,  Hollard84  of  Geneva,  or  "Ward85  in  London 
— all  of  whom,  setting  out  with  preconceived  determination  to  vin- 
dicate the  parental  claims  of  "Adam  and  Eve,"  enter  ipso  facto 
into  the  category  above  distinguished  by  the  letter  A. 

The  whole  of  these  authors,  great  or  small,  merge  into  Prichard, 
— whose  profound  bibliographical  knowledge  and  unsurpassed  in- 
dustry constitute  at  once  the  alpha  and  omega  of  all  that  may  survive 
the  criticism  of  advancing  science,  in  the  above-named  books.  In 
our  "  Types  of  Mankind,"  what  my  collaborator,  Dr.  Nott,  and 
myself  deemed  to  be  this  revered  ethnographer's  fallacies,  has 
already  been  pointed  out.  By  omitting  to  bestow  adequate  conside- 
ration on  "permanence  of  type,"  when  all  materials  were  within  his 
reach,  Dr.  Prichard  exposed  the  vital  error  of  his  system,  leaving  to 
Dr.  Morton  the  honors  of  the  field.  I  have  no  wish  to  disturb  the 
ashes  of  departed  greatness,  except  to  consecrate  those  of  both  men 
in  funereal  urns  of  equal  grandeur.  Mr.  Edwin  ISTorris's  new  and 
beautiful  edition 86  is  embellished,  and  in  philology  usefully  extended, 
by  this  learned  gentleman's  notes.  The  ending  sentence,  on  the 
final  page,  discloses  the  only  ultimatum  of  Prichard's  doctrine  that 
now  concerns  us.     It  seems  like  the  last  vestige  of  dogmatical  bias 

80  Lectures  on  Physiology,  Zoology,  and  the  Natural  History  of  Man;  1  vol.  8vo,  London, 
1819;  compare  p.  501  with  548. 

81  Principes  de  la  Philosophie  de  VHistoire,  Paris,  1838;  pp.  73-89: — and  L' Homme  connu 
par  la  Revelation,  Paris,  1833;  II,  pp.  195,  206-221. 

82  Diclionnaire  de  V Ethnographic  moderne,  4to,  double  column,  Paris,  1853,  pp.  1927!  Its 
only  merit  consists  in  the  republication,  by  way  of  introductory,  of  D'Omaiius  d'Hallot's 
excellent  Elements  d'  Ethnographic 

83  Hist.  Gen.  des  Races  Humaines,  ou  Philosophic  Ethnographique,  Paris.  12mo,  1849;  pp. 
295-99. 

84  De  V Homme  el  des  Races  Humaines,  Paris,  12mo,  1853;  last  page. 

85  The  Natural  History  of  Mankind,  London,  12mo,  1849;  p.  7,  &c. 

86  Prichard,  Natural  History  of  Man,  edited  by  Edwin  Norris,  Esq.,  London,  Bailliere,  2 
vols.  8vo,  1854;  LT,  p.  714. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  437 

which  its  upright  penman  did  not  live  to  modify  or  efface :  "We  are 
entitled  to  draw  confidently  the  conclusion  that  all  human  races  are 
of  one  species  and  one  family." 

Not  in  any  sense  derived  from  theological  formularies,  however, 
does  Alexander  von  Humholdt  understand  the  term  "  unity "  as 
classified  under  our  letter  A.  Eb  such  idea  can  he  found  through- 
out the  eleven  pages  of  Cosmos  devoted  to  the  "  human  species  "  as  a 
component  part  of  nature.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  paragraph  that 
heads  this  essay  (ubi  suptra),  Humboldt  expressly  repudiates  myths, 
fiction,  and  pretended  tradition.  Let  us  inquire  whether  the  Baron's 
definition  of  this  word  should  find  a  place  with  letter  B. 

To  a  certain  extent  it  must ;  because  the  phrase  "  unity  of  the 
human  species,"  preceding  and  following  the  declaration  of  the  great 
physiologist  John  Miiller,  viz :  that  "  human  races  are  the  forms  of 
an  unique  species,"  m  necessarily  implies  connection  with  the  termi- 
nology of  Natural  History.  Such,  I  find,  is  the  sense  in  which  the 
Baron's  learned  countryman,  Dr.  Zeune,  understands  the  same  pas- 
sage—  "The  expression,  'unity  of  the  human  race,'  has  been  vari- 
ously misunderstood,  and  referred  to  the  so-called  unity,  or  descent 
from  a  single  human  pair.  But  the  honored  author  did  not  mean 
the  world-historical  unity,  but  the  natural-historical  unity ;  that  is, 
the  prolific  perpetuation  of  the  different  human  races,  so  that  their 
hybrids  can  again  cohabit  fruitfully  with  each  other ;  and  not  like 
allied  genera  [groups],  such  as  the  horse  and  ass,  wolf  and  dog,  pro- 
duce sterile  hybrids,  like  mules  [cavaline-asses]  and  wolf-dog  [lu- 
pine-hound], which  can  only  propagate  themselves  through  the  parent 
stock."  He  remarks,  besides,  "  To  draw  the  origin  of  the  different 
human  races  from  one  single  man  is  absurd  and  impossible.  These 
races  exist  independently  one  from  another  since  the  oldest  times. 
Which  was  the  most  ancient  it  is  impossible  to  say."83  So  also,  still 
more  recently,  does  Owen,69  whose  anatomical  authority  is  to  none 
inferior,  conclude  that — "Man  is  the  sole  species  of  his  genus,  the 
sole  representative  of  his  order;" — almost  the  words  of  Blumenbach, 
echoed  by  eminent  naturalists  for  three  consecutive  generations ; 
especially  by  those  who  with  Cuvier,90  De  Blainville,91  Gervais,02  and 

87  Cosmos,  Fr.  ed.,  i.  p.  425;  and  infra. 

88  tjber  Schadelbildung  zur  festern  Begriindung  der  Menchenrassen,  Berlin,  1846. 

89  Newspaper  report  of  Lecture  on  Anthropoids  before  the  British  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science;  session  of  1854. 

90  Griffith's  transl.,  I,  London,  p.  129. 

91  Oslcographie,  Mammifires,  Primates;  4to.,  1841. 

82  Trois  regnes  de  la  Nature,  Hist.  Nat.  des  Mammiferes,  4to.,  Paris,  1854;  Ire.  partie,  pp. 
7-8 


438  THE    MOKOGENISTS    AND 

Chenu,93  have  discussed  more  recently  the  points  of  resemblance,  or 
of  disparity,  existing  between  the  Bimanes  and  the  Quadrumanes. 
Their  united  results  will  be  passed  under  review  in  the  second  divi- 
sion of  our  essay. 

Nevertheless,  Morton94  and  Agassiz95 — accounted  by  celebrated 
naturalists,  anatomists,  cranioscopists,  palaeontologists,  and  ethnogra- 
phers, to  possess  a  weighty  voice  in  the  premises,  have  not  been  able 
to  reconcile  the  term  "  species,"  as  applied  customarily  (and  as  I 
think,  too  loosely)  to  mankind,  with  the  rigorous  use  of  this  word  in 
more  broadly-marked  departments  of  Natural  History. 

Dr.  Meigs's,  Prof.  Leidy's,  Dr.  Nott's,  contributions  to  the  present 
volume  cover  the  ground  of  debate  on  a  point  which,  in  its  bearings 
upon  mankind,  each  writer  has  studied  as  profoundly  as  any  ethno- 
logist living.  For  my  individual  part,  I  follow  my  master  in  archae- 
ology, Letronne ;  who,  in  1845,  commenced  his  first  lesson  to  our 
crowded  Egyptian  class,  at  Paris,  with  the  sentence — "  Messieurs ! 
avant  tout,  commencons  par  nous  entendre  sur  des  termes:"  because, 
until  the  precise  limit  of  the  designation  "species"  becomes  abso- 
lutely defined,  or  even  conventionally  agreed  upon,  it  might,  per- 
haps, be  prudent  to  suspend  its  further  obtrusion  into  Anthropology. 

A  naturalist  of  repute  has  remarked — "  The  Germans  themselves, 
whose  terminology  did  possess  the  fault  of  being  so  vague,  now 
aspire  to  exactitude  of  language.  This  does  not  mean  to  say  that 
the  definitions  of  naturalists  have  an  absolute  value,  that  is  not  pos- 
sible in  human  sciences;  but  they  have  at  least  a  -precise  value. 
Everybody  [?]  now-a-days  knows  what  is  understood  by  the  words 
species,  race,  and  variety. 

"It  is  certain  that,  in  scientific  discussions  of  which  man  has  been 
the  object,  the  words  genus,  species,  race,  and  variety,  have  been  too 
often  confounded.  Nevertheless,  the  meaning  of  these  words  is  now 
perfectly  determined,  and  it  suffices,  to  avoid  all  error,  to  stick  to 
the  definitions  laid  down  by  naturalists.  Thus,  one  generally  under- 
stands by  species,  an  assemblage  of  beings  which  descend,  or  may  be 
regarded  as  descending,  from  common  parentage  [that  is,  first  a  rule 
is  made  absolute,  a  priori,  and  then  all  the  different  types  of  men  are 
made  to  fit  into  it !]  The  union  of  many  species,  possessing  between 
each  other  multiplied  affinities,  forms  a  genus.  The  words  race  and 
variety  both  indicate  a  variation  of  the  type  of  the  species,  of  which, 


93  Encyclopedic  d '  Hisloire  Naturelle,  Paris,  1852?  vol.  i,  "Quadrumanes,  pp.  1-21:  pro- 
bably among  the  most  copious  as  well  as  the  fairest  analyzers  of  these  questions. 

94  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  81,  375,  and  elsewhere,  cites  Dr.  Morton's  writings. 

96  Op.  cit.,  p.  lxxiT,  Prof.  Agassiz's  definitions.     See  also  the  Professor's  fresh  contribu- 
tion, ante. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  439 

moreover,  they  are  derivatives.  But  the  word  variety  is  not  appli- 
cable save  to  individuals :  the  word  race  is  an  assemblage  of  indivi- 
duals descending  from  the  same  species  and  transmitting  to  each 
other  determinate  characters. 

"  The  difference  between  species  and  race  is,  therefore,  that  the  first 
possesses  something  fixed,  something  independent  of  accidental  and 
variable  conditions  of  the  (viilieu  ambiant)  fluctuating  centre.  The 
second,  on  the  contrary,  presents  ordinarily  the  result  of  this  {action 
du  milieu)  central  action,  and  in  consequence  is  essentially  variable. 

"  Conformably  to  these  definitions,  all  mankind  constitute  but  a 
single  species,  although  there  are  among  them  some  different  races  ; 
but  these  races  can  all  be  brought  back  to  one  and  the  same  primi- 
tive type."96     This  explanation  I  deny  in  toto. 

M.  Paul  de  Eemusat,  in  ethnological  studies  no  tyro,  after  stating 
both  sides  with  fairness,  and  then  concluding  for  his  part  that 
"unity"  is  impossible,97  frankly  inquires  —  "What,  then,  is  this  spe- 
cific character  ?  Can  one  give  to  species  a  clear  and  precise  defini- 
tion? Do  there  even  necessarily  exist  'species,'  as  our  minds  are 
prone  to  suppose?  *  *  *  whilst  (forsooth)  we  cannot  come  to  a  com- 
mon understanding,  either  upon  the  meaning  of  the  word  'species,' 
nor  determine  a  sign,  real  and  invariable,  of  distinction  between  the 
different  classes  called  by  this  name"  !  Another  of  those  clear- 
sighted naturalists,  trained  at  the  Jardin  des  Platites,  whose  special 
gift  it  seems  to  pierce  through  mystifications,  started,  ten  years  ago, 
a  series  of  difficulties  about  "species  "  which  none  but  thorough-bred 
naturalists  (not  the  mere  theological  dilettante)  are  competent  to 
analyze  or  remove :  nor  will  outsiders  like  myself  fail  to  be  enlight- 
ened, as  well  as  amused,  by  whatever  is  scored  by  the  steel-tipped 
pen  of  M.  Gerard.98  Again,  Prof.  Joseph  Leidy,99  rejecting  previous 
definitions,  observes  that — "A  species  is  a  mere  convenient  word 
with  which  naturalists  empirically  designate  groups  of  organized 
beings  possessing  characters  of  comparative  constancy,  as  far  as  his- 
toric experience  [precisely  the  criteria  demanded  (ubi  supra)  by  Joh. 
Miiller,  and  which  both  the  Humboldts  acknowledge  to  be,  with 
respect  to  human  origines,  a  powerless  implement]  has  guided  them  in 
giving  due  weight  to  such  constancy.  According  to  this  definition," 
Prof.  Leidy  continues, "  the  races  of  men  are  evidently  distinct  species." 

96  M.  de  Quatkefages,  at  the  Seance  du  9  Juillet,  1847,  of  the  Society  Ethnologique  de 
Paris  (Bulletin,  Tome  i.,  1847;  p.  237). 

97  "  Des  Races  Humaines  " — Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  15  Mai,  1854,  pp.  788-804. 

98  D'Oebigny,  Dictionnaire  Univ.  d'ffisloire  Nalurelle,  Paris,  1844,  vol.  V,  sub  voce  "Es- 
pece,"  pp.  438-52. 

99  Nott's  Appendix  B.  to  The  Moral  and  Intellectual  Diversity  of  Races,  &c,  from  the 
French  of  De  Gobineau,  by  H.  Hotz,  Philada.,  12mo.,  1856;  pp.  480-1. 


440  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

And  finally,  Alfred  Maury,  no  raw  recruit  even  in  the  physical 
sciences,  the  analysis  of  which  preceded  his  present  high  status  in  the 
archaeological  and  ethnographic — reviewing  Hotz's  Be  G-ohineau,  and 
Pott's  Ungleichheit  menschlicher  Rassen,m  critically  ohserves — "  The 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  is  one,  without  doubt;  but  what  sig- 
nifies the  mental  unity  of  humanity,  if,  in  its  application,  men  treat 
each  other  as  members  of  inimical  or  rival  families, — if  the  force  of 
things  always  condemns  the  ones  to  fall  beneath  the  domination  of 
the  others,  and  to  extinguish  themselves  in  their  arms  ?  To  dispute 
about  knowing  whether  races  constitute  different  'species,'  or  merely 
'varieties,'  is  to  put  forth  school-divinity  and  not  science.  That  which 
is  necessary  is,  to  measure  the  extent  of  separations,  and  hence  ascer- 
tain the  proportions  of  those  inequalities  that  none  can  deny.  The 
name  which  one  may  give  to  human  races  will  not  affect  the  thing 
itself,  nor  in  any  way  alter  the  reality." 

"  Varius  Sucronensis  ait,  iEMiuus  Scaurits  negat :  utri  creditis,  qtiirites  ?" I01 

In  the  face  of  such  objections,  before  an  archaeologist  can  subscribe 
unconditionally  to  the  "  unity  of  the  human  '  species,'  "  he  ought  to 
wait  until  some  revelation  enables  those  who  use  this  apothegm  to 
show  that  they  really  comprehend  the  signification  of  a  term  logically 
inherent  in  their  proposition.  That  is  to  say,  —  adopting  here  the 
forcible  if  trite  aphorism  of  a  scientific  colleague — in  plain  English 
and  without  diplomatic  circumlocution,  when  dictionaries  furnish  me 
with  as  precise  a  meaning  for  the  term  "  species  "  as  I  can  discover 
for  such  words  as  beef,  or  mutton™  it  will  be  time  enough  for  accept- 
ing its  alleged  corollary,  viz  :  the  "unity"  of  sanguineous,  or  conge- 
nital, descent  for  all  the  diverse  groups  of  men — now  distinct  in 
colors,  in  conformations,  in  languages,  in  geographical  habitats,  in 
historical  traditions,  and  in  all  their  other  countless  moral,  intellec- 
tual, and  physical  phenomena — from  a  mythic  "Adam  and  Eve." 

"  At  the  very  onset  we  are  met  by  the  question,  What  is  a  species? 
and  sides  will  be  taken  according  to  the  answer  each  one  is  ready  to 
adopt.  The  definition  of  a  species  does  not  necessarily  include 
descent  from  a  single  pair,  because  the  first  male  [AISA]  and  the 
first  female  [AIS/;aII]  would,  by  the  definition,  be  of  different  spe- 
cies,"— acutely  remarks  Prof.  Haldeman.103 

In  that  whereon  everybody,  whether  competent  to  decide  or  not, 
volunteers    an    "  opinion,"    typographical    facilities   costeris  paribus 

"»  Athenaium  Francais,  Paris,  19  Avril,  1856;  p.  328. 

101  Bentley,  Phalaris,  ed.   1836;  i.,  p.  xii. ;  from  Val.  Max.  Hi.  7. 

102  ii Xe  mot  est  peut-Stre  unpeu  fe'roce;  mats,  sacre  bleu,  il  est  sincere!"  —  as  Penguin  says, 
in  "Riche  d' Amour." 

103  Recent  Freshwater  Mollusca  (supra)  pp.  3-4. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  441 

enable  me  to  do  the  same  ;  and  mine,  on  this  mystified  term  "  spe- 
cies," as  applicable  to  the  genus  homo  alone,  will,  like  that  of  other 
men,  pass  for  what  it  may  be  worth :  the  critic  always  remembering 
that  a  definition  is  precise  in  the  ratio  of  the  fewness  of  its  words. 
I  submit  to  fellow-arch  geologists — 

Species  ;  that  which,  through  conjunction  with  itself,  always, 
according  to  experience,  reproduces  itself. 

Thus,  by  way  of  example,  the  union  of  a  negro  with  a  negress 
produces  a  negro  ;  that  of  an  American  Indian  with  a  squaw  produces 
an  Indian ;  that  of  a  Jew  (circumcision,  in-  or  ex-  elusive)  with  a 
Jewess  produces  a  Jew  ;  that  of  a  Saxon  male  with  a  Saxon  female 
produces  a  Saxon  ;  and  so  forth,  invariably,  throughout  all  the  fami- 
lies of  men.  In  any  case  where  the  offspring  of  each  chances  not 
to  be  identical,  in  its  race-character,  with  the  supposed  parents,  such 
deviation  can  occur  only  where  either  parent  is  not  of  pure  blood ; 
and  proves,  ipso  facto,  that  the  ancestral  pedigrees  of  one  or  the  other 
procreator  must,  within  the  limit  of  about  three  to  seven  (or  more) 
preceding  generations,  have  been  crossed  by  a  foreign  stock. 

Indeed,  I  do  not  see  why  the  first  definition  of  Prichard  does  not 
circumscribe  all  the  above  examples.  It  is  that  given  in  the  second 
edition,104  1826,  of  his  erudite  works ;  which  differs,  not  merely 
through  the  entire  absence  of  this  lucid  rule  in  the  first,m  1813 ;  but 
also  essentially  from  the  one  laid  down  at  a  later  period,  1837,  in 
the  third.1"6  Prichard's  capacious  mind,  like  that  of  all  conscientious 
inquirers,  was  progressive ;  and  those  who  really  know  the  various 
editions  of  his  "Researches,"  cannot  fail  to  admire  how  quickly  he 
dropped  one  hypothesis  after  another,  until  his  last  volume  closes 
with  a  complete  abandonment  of  the  unity  of  Genesis  itself.107  It 
is  probable  that  his  biographer,  Dr.  Cull,  is  as  little  acquainted  with 
these  bibliophile  discrepancies,  as  with  ethnological  criticism  gene- 
rally— Hebrew  palaeography  inclusive.108  Prichard  printed  in  a.  d. 
1826: 

"  The  meaning  attached  to  the  term  Species  [almost  identical  with 

1M  Researches  into  the  Physical  History  of  Man,  London,  2d  edition,  8vo,  1826;  vol.  I, 
pp.  90-1. 

lm  Op.  cit.,  1st  edition,  London,  8vo,  1813  —  nothing  of  the  kind! 

106  Op.  cit.,  3d  edition,  London,  8vo,  1837;  vol.  II,  p.  105: — cited  at  length  in  "Types 
of  Mankind,"  p.  80. 

107  Physical  History  of  Mankind,  8vo,  London,  1847 ;  vol.  V,  pp.  560-65. 

108  Norris's  edition  of  Prichard's  Natural  History  of  Man;  London,  Bailliere,  1854; 
vol.  I,  pp.  xxi-ix: — "Short  biographical  Notice,"  by  Richard  Cull,  Esq.,  "Honorary 
Secretary."  How  correctly  he  reads  English,  may  be  inferred  from  his  critique  of  Agassiz's 
paper  (Address  to  the  Ethnological  Society  of  London,  May,  1854;  London,  8vo,  pp.  12-13.); 
where  he  substitutes  "6.  The  Hottentot  realm,"  (p.  8)  for  "  Hottentot  fauna"  (compare 
"  Types  of  Mankind,"  p.  lxxvii). 


442  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Lacordiere's  in  his  Entomologie],  in  natural  history,  is  very  simple 
and  obvious.  It  includes  only  one  circumstance,  namely,  an  original 
distinctiveness  and  constant  transmission  of  any  character.  A  race 
of  animals,  or  plants,  marked  by  any  peculiarity  of  structure,  which 
have  always  been  constant  and  undeviating,  constitutes  a  species ; 
and  two  races  are  considered  as  specifically  different,  if  they  are 
distinguished  from  each  other  by  some  peculiarities,  which  one 
cannot  be  supposed  to  have  acquired,  or  the  other  to  have  lost, 
through  any  known  operation  of  physical  causes :  for  we  are  led  to 
conclude,  that  the  tribe  thus  distinguished  cannot  have  sprung  from 
the  same  original  stock."  It  need  hardly  be  repeated  that  the 
learned  ethnographer  endeavors  to  show  the  inapplicability,  owing 
to  deviations,  of  this  law  to  Man.  My  studies  lead  me  to  the  oppo- 
site opinion,  exemplified  in  the  instances  above  enumerated. 

Such  simple  principles  are  notorious  to  dog-fanciers,  cattle- 
breeders,  or  poultry-men  •;  and  are  practised  by  them  with  unerring 
pecuniary  success,  in  the  rearing  of  animals,  quadruped  or  biped. 
It  is  but  a  superstition  that  imagines  mankind  not  to  be  bound  by 
the  same  natural  law. 

Under  this  self-evident  rule,  some  scholastic  confusion  of  ideas 
may  be  disposed  of  through  a  few  interrogatories.  If,  by  "  species" 
are  meant  beings  of  the  same  (equally -conventional  word)  genus, 
whose  sexual  union  produces  offspring,  mankind  fall  into  that  class 
unquestionably ;  with  dogs,  sheep,  goats,  and  other  mammals  sus- 
ceptible of  domestication  ;m  but  what  living  naturalist,  of  repute,  at 
this  year  1857,  any  longer  classifies  all  the  canes,  all  the  oves,  or  all 
the  caprse,  each  into  a  single  "species?"  If  hybridity,  in  any  of 
its  various  and  as  yet  unsettled  degrees,  be  considered  a  test  of 
"species"  —  i.  e.  the  production  of  progeny  more  or  less  linprolific 
inter  se  —  then,  in  Australia,110  a  native  female  of  the  aboriginal 
stock  ceases,  after  cohabitation  with  an  English  colonist,  to  pro- 
create upon  reunion  with  a  male  autochthon  of  her  own  race : 
— then,  in  Van  Diemen's  Land,  before  the  deportation  of  its  few 
(only  210)  remaining  aborigines,  in  1835,  to  Elinder's  Island,  Bass's 
Straits,111  even  a  convict  population  of  athletic  and  unscrupulous 
English  males  failed,  in  their  intercourse  with  Tasmanian  females, 

109  Morton,  Hybridity  in  Animals  and  Plants,  New  Haven,  1847 ;  p.  23.  —  The  egagre  is, 
however,  reputed  to  be  the  father  of  all  goats ;  the  movflon,  that  of  all  sheep  ;  the  Nepaulese 
buansu  (canis  primcevus)  that  of  all  dogs;  just  as  Adam  that  of  all  mankind;  according  to 
Marcel  de  Serres  (Cosmogonie  de  Mo'isc,  I,  pp.  307-22). 

110  Stkzelecki,  Physical  description  of  Nev>  South  Wales  and  Van  Diemen's  Land,  London, 
8vo,  1845;  pp.  346-7: — -Jacquinot,  Zoologie,  II,  p.  109: — Knox,  Races,  p.  190. 

111  Quor  et  Gtaimarb,  Voy.  de  I' Astrolabe,  1826-9;  Zoologie,  Paris,  8vo,  1830;  I,  p. 
46: — D'Omalius  d'Halloy,  Des  Races  Surnames,  1845  ;  p.  186. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  443 

not  merely  to  produce  an  intermediate  race,  but  to  leave  more  than 
one  or  two  adult  specimens  of  their  repugnant  unions ;  nor  are  there 
reports  either  of  hybrids,  resulting  from  the  mixture  of  Europeans 
with  the  Andamanes  of  the  hay  of  Bengal: — then,  in  the  ultra-tropi- 
cal parts  of  America,  as  well  as  in  its  southern  or  tropical  States, 
mulattoes,  produced  by  intercourse  between  exotic  Europeans  of 
the  white  race,  with  equally-exotic  African  females  of  the  black,  die 
out,  unless  recrossed  by  one  or  other  of  the  parental  stocks,  in  three 
or  four  generations:112  —  then,  in  Egypt,  the  Memlooks,  or  "Ghuz," 
originally  male  slaves113  of  the  Uzbek,  Ouigour  and  Mongol  races, 
and  afterwards  kept  up  by  incessant  importations  of  European, 
Turkish,  Circassian,  and  other  white  boys  (intermixed  with  negro 
slaves),  were  not  only  unable  to  rear  half-caste  children  to  recruit 
their  squadrons ;  —  but,  whilst  their  blood-stains  are  scarcely  yet 
obliterated  on  the  battlements  of  the  Cairine-Citadel  since  their 
slaughter  in  1811,  not  a  trace  survives  of  their  promiscuous  philo- 
gamy  among  the  Fellah  population  of  the  Nile  :  —  then,  in  Algeria, 
the  Moorish  [Mauri),  or  Mauresque114  inhabitants  of  seaboard  cities, 
[in  a  climate  which,  except  in  depressed  agricultural  localities  (where 
the  3Ioors  do  not  reside),  is  like  that  of  southern  Spain]  unstrength- 
ened  (as  of  yore  in  the  piratical  clays  when  Christian  captives  of  all 
shades,  and  negro  prisoners  of  every  hue,  thronged  their  slave- 
bazaars)  by  the  perpetual  influx  of  new  and  vigorous  blood, — are 
dying  off  at  a  fearful  rate115  through  the  inexorable  laws  of  hybridity  ; 
at  the  same  time  that,  after  twenty-five  years  of  experimental  agri- 

112  Nott,  Natural  Hist,  of  the  Caucasian  and  Negro  Races,  Mobile,  1844;  pp.  16-7,  19, 
28.  30-5  -.—Biblical  and  Physical  Hist,  of  Man ;  New  York,  1849 ;  pp.  30-47. 

113  Klapeoth,  Tableaux  de  VAsie,  Paris,  1826,  pp.  121-2.  Ebn  Khaledoon,  Histoire  des 
Berberes  et  des  Dynasties  Musulmanes  de  V Afrique  Septentrionale,  Transl.  de  Slane,  Alger, 
1851,  II,  p.  49  —  and  Note  from  Quatremere  (Mem.  sitr  I'Eggpte,  II,  p.  356). 

114Carette,  Exploration  Scientifique  de  V  Algerie,  1840-2,  Paris,  1853;  III,  pp.  306-10, 
for  intermixture  of  Races,  &c.  Pascal-Duprat,  Essai  Historique  sur  les  Races  anciennes  el 
modernes  de  V Afrique  Septentrionale,  Paris,  1845;  pp.  217,  240-64: — but  the  best  definition 
of  the  varied  inhabitants  of  that  part  of  Barbary  may  be  seen  in  Rozet  (Voyage  dans  la 
Regence  d' Alger,  Paris,  1833),  who,  among  the  "sept  varifitfa  d'hommes  bien  distinctes  les 
vines  des  autres ;  les  Berblres,  les  Maures,  les  negres,  les  Arabes,  les  Tares  et  les  Koulouglis," 
clearly  strikes  out  the  mixed  populace  of  Maures  (Moors):  and  proves,  as  well  their  hy- 
bridity, as  the  misconceptions  (Shakspeare's  Othello  to  wit)  prevalent  about  their  name 
"Moor"  (II,  pp.  1-3,  51-2).  On  the  opposite  side,  consult  Bertherand,  Medecine  el 
Hygiene  des  Arabes,  Paris,  1855;  pp.  174,  556. 

115  Boudin,  Hisloire  Slatistique  de  la  colonisation  et  de  la  Population  en  Algerie,  Paris,  1853 ; 
pp.  5,  21,  30: — See  also  Knox  (Races  of  Men,  pp.  197-210),  who  acknowledges  that  he 
derives  his  information  from  a  former  publication  of  the  highest  authority  in  these  ques- 
tions, my  honored  friend,  M.  le  Dr.  Boudin,  Me'decin  en  Chef  de  l'Hopital  Militaire  du 
Roule,  Paris  (Lettres  sur  V Algerie,  1848).  I  await  with  great  expectations,  having  seen 
some  of  its  proof-sheets  at  Paris,  Dr.  Boudin's  Traile  de  Stalislique  et  de  Geographic  medicales 
(now  "sous  presse  chez  Bailliere"),  for  complete  establishment  of  all  these  positions. 


444  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

culture,  civil,  military,  and  convict,  through  which  myriads  of 
colonists  have  perished,  it  has  become  a  settled  fact  in  the  Imperial 
administration  that,  as  tillers  of  the  soil,  Frenchmen  can  never 
colonize  Barhary ; 116  [like  the  English  in  Hindostan,  the  Dutch  in 
Malayana,  the  Spaniards  in  South  America,  and  the  Portuguese  in 
Africa,  France  must  employ  native  labor  —  that  of  the  indigenous 
"adscripti  glebse,"  viz.,  the  Berber  race,  or  its  exotic  congener  the 
Arab] : — and  then,  finally,  not  to  burthen  the  page  with  illustrations 
that  every  country  in  the  world  can  supply,  if  history,  which  means 
experience  (the  only  test  recognized  by  Miiller,  Leidy,  and  by  archae- 
ology), be  taken  as  a  criterion,  we  have  yet  to  learn  whether  the 
greatest  nations  have  not  developed  themselves  through  the  union 
of  proximate  "species,"  and  the  most  deplorable  arisen  through 
that  of  remote  ones. 

To  explain  my  conception,  two  references  will  at  present  suffice : 
first,  to  our  last  publication,117  for  Dr.  ISTott's  definition  of  ethnic  sub- 
divisions of  '  species ;'  and  next,  to  the  work  of  our  learned  friend 
Count  A.  de  Gobineau ; 11S  from  whom — however  I  may  differ  in  trifles 
relating  to  his  fundamental  theory  of  the  Arian  origin  of  all  civili- 
zation, or  to  his  classifications  of  Xth  Genesis — ethnology,  in  his  three 
chapters  on  the  Romans,  derives  one  of  the  most  masterly  elucida- 
tions ever  penned  by  any  historian.  Nor  is  this  eulogium  merely  a 
prejudice  of  my  own  ;  three  of  the  best-informed  and  critical  scholars 
of  England,  to  whom  I  lent  M.  de  Gobineau's  volumes,  coinciding 
entirely  in  such  hearty  acknowledgment.  The  following  specimen 
will  be  new  to  the  general  reader  :  — 

"  But  there  appeared  once,  in  the  history  of  decaying  peoples,  a 
man  strenuously  indignant  at  the  debasement  of  his  nation ;  dis- 
cerning with  eagle  eye,  through  the  mists  of  false  prosperity,  the 
abyss  toward  which  a  general  demoralization  was  dragging  the  com- 
monwealth; and  who,  master  of  all  the  means  for  action, — birth, 
riches,  talents,  personal  standing,  high  appointments — found  him- 
self, at  the  same  time,  robust  in  sanguinary  nature,  and  determined 
not  to  shrink  from  the  use  of  any  resource.  This  surgeon  —  this 
butcher,  if  you  please — this  august  scoundrel,  if  you  like  it  better — 
this  Titan  —  showed  himself  in  Rome  at  the  moment  when  the  re- 
public, drunk  with   crimes,  with   dominion,  and  with   triumphal 

us  Desjobekt,  L'Algerie,  1847;  pp.  5-8,  23-29:— Id.  Discours  in  the  Assemble  Na- 
tionale  Legislative,  Session  de  1850,  pp.  8-18 :  —  Id.,  Documents  Statistiques  sur  VAlgerie, 
1851,  pp.  3-5.     Dr.  Nott  has  enlarged  upon  these  new  facts  in  his  Chap.  IV,  ante. 

U'  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  81,  407-10. 

us  Essai  sur  V  Inegalile  des  Races  Humaines,  1855;  III,  Chap.  V,  VI,  VII;  especially  pp. 
274-7. 


THE     POL  YGENISTS. 


445 


exhaustion,  gnawed  by  the  leprosy  of  every  vice,  was  rolling  itself 
over  and  over  towards  an  abyss.  He  was  Lucius  Cornelius 
Stlla.  *  *  * 

"At  the  end  of  a  long  career,  after  efforts  of  which  the  measure 
of  intensity  is  the  violence  accumulated,  Sylla,  despairing  of  the 
future  —  melancholy,  worn  out,  discouraged  —  abdicated  of  his  own 
accord  the  dictator's  hatchet ;  and,  resigning  himself  to  live  unoccu- 
pied in  the  midst  of  that  patrician  or  plebeian  populace  which  still 
shuddered  at  sight  of  him,  he  proved,  at  least,  that  he  was  not  a  mere 
vulgar  and  ambitious  politician;  and  that,  having  recognized  the 
inanity  of  his  hopes,  he  cared  not  to  preserve  a  sterile  power.  *  *  * 
"  There  really  existed  no  chance  of  his  success.  The  populace  he 
wished  to  bring  back  to  the  manners  and  discipline  of  the  olden  time, 
resembled  in  nothing  that  republican  people  who  had  practised  them. 
To  convince  oneself,  it  suffices  to  compare  the  ethnic  elements  of  the 
days  of  Cincinnatus  [b.  c.  460]  with  those  existing  at  the  epoch  when 
the  great  dictator  lived  [b.  c.  188-81]. 


Time  of  Cincinnatps. 


Time  of  Stlla. 


1  Sabines,  in  majority ; 
■I  EUiiscans,  a  few; 
ItaliotSy  a  few. 

Sabines, 
Samnites, 
SabeRians, 
Sicilies, 
_  Hellenes,  a  few. 


1st.  Intermixed  majority 
of  white  and  yellow 
[dark]  races ; 


2d.  Very  feeble  Semitic  Im- 
migration. 


Jtalwts,    crossed     with 

Hellenic  blood. 
ltcdwts. 

Greelcs  of  Magna  Qracia, 

and  from  Sicily; 

Hellenists  of  Asia; 

Shemites  of  Asia ; 

Shemites  of  Africa; 

t  Shemites  of  Spain. 


1st.  Majority  Semiti- 
cized; 

2d.  Minority  Arian : 

3d.  Extreme  subdivi- 
sion of  the  yellow 
[dark]  principle." 


It  is  impossible  to  bring  back  into  the  same  frame-work  two 
nations  which,  under  the  same  name,  resemble  each  other  so  little," 
very  correctly  observes  M.  de  Gobineau :  and  I  will  only  add  that, 
when  ethnologists  apply  this  excellent  method  of  analysis  to  every 
nation,  —  especially  to  these  United  States  of  America  — they  will 
obtain  practical  results  undreamed  of  by  literary  historians,  who, 
believing  in  the  "Unity  of  the  human  Species,"  have  neither  any 
idea  of  these  amalgamations  of  distinct  races,  nor  of  their  natural, 
and  therefore  inevitable,  consequences  for  good  or  evil. 

Again  reverting  to  our  questions  as  to  the  word  "species,"  after 
stripping  away  sophistries  that  encumber  such  vague  term,  let  me 
ask,  —  does  any  one  pretend,  when  races  are  called  by  their  intelli- 
gible names,  that  carnal  intercourse  between  an  Eskimo  and  a  Ne- 
gress ever  originated  what  we  understand  by  a  Greek, — between  a 
Dane  and  a  Dyak,  an  Arab, — between  a  Tungousian  and  an  Israelite, 


446  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

a  New  Zealander, — or  between  a  Botocudo  and  a  Tasmanian,  a  Bfant- 
chou  Tartar,  a  Lapp,  a  BecJwuana,  or  perchance  a  Kelt  ?  In  every 
one  of  these  imaginary,  and,  anciently,  geographically-impossible 
unions,  each  fecund  act  of  coition  could  produce  but  a  "half-breed;" 
intermediate,  that  is,  between  any  two  races.  One  feels  ashamed, 
now  that  transformation  of  one  "  species  "  of  animal  into  another 
through  the  exploded  power  of  metamorphosis,  in  former  days  of 
ignorance  attributed  to  climate,  is  rejected,  as  contrary  to  experience, 
by  all  living  naturalists  (even  the  theological) — one  really  blushes  to 
descend  to  such  common-place  methods  of  illustration ;  but  the  neces- 
sity is  imperious  in  view  of  the  amount  of  perversion  and  mediaeval 
credulity  still  passing  currently  as  regards  the  study  of  Man. 

A.nd  when  Blumenbach119  and  Ism.  Geoffroy  St.  Hilaire,130  Btjr- 
dach121  and  Lucas,122  Berard123  and  Girou  de  Buzareingues,124 
Walker125  and  Chevreull,126  Flourens127  and  Morton,128  Vogt129 
and  Priaulx,130  pile  up  instances'  (among  mammifera  alone), 
whereby  the  so-called  laws  of  "species,"  and  often  too  of  "genera," 
are  set  at  naught  by  contradictory  facts,  is  it  not  folly  in  ethnologists 
to  go  on  wasting  their  time  about  the  encyclopaedic  meaning  of  an 
Anglicized  foreign  bisyllable,  which  every  true  naturalist  of  the  pre- 
sent day  is  forced  to  qualify  with  explanatory  adjectives,  according 
to  his  individual  acceptation  of  its  sense  ?  Voltaire  pithily  remarks 
— "  Ce  qu'on  peut  expliquer  de  vingt  manieres  differentes  ne  merite 
d'etre  explique  d'aucune:"  —  and  for  myself,  I  have  long  ago  dis- 
carded its  use  in  ethnography, — substituting  "  Type"  when  I  intend 
to  designate  men  whose  physical  appearance  stands  in  strongest  con- 
trast to  that  of  others  (ex.  gr.  Swedes  and  Negritos,  Chaymas  and 
Georgians,  Kourilians  and  Mandaras,  Taitians  and  Yakuts) ;  or 
"Race"  where  the  distinction  is  not  so  strongly  characterized  (as 
between  Italians  and  Greeks,  Jews  and  Arabs,  Malgaches  and  Ma- 

119  De  Generis  ffumani  varielate  nativa,  1781 ;  pp.  7-11. 

120  Bisloire  ginHrah  et  particulate  des  Anomalies  de  V  Organisation,  Paris,  1832 ;  i.  pp.  221-6. 
'M  Traite  de  Physiologie,  trad.  Jourdan,  Paris;  2d  vol.  1838,  pp.  182-5,  261-70. 

' 122  Traite" philosophique  et  physiologique  de  V Se'redite  Nalurelle,  Paris,  1847;  i.  pp.  193-209; 

ii.  pp.  177-329. 
123  Cours  de  Physiologie,  Paris,  1850-55. 
»»  De  la  Generation,  Paris,  8to.,  1828;  pp.  124-132,  307-8. 

125  On  Intermarriage,  London,  8vo.  1838 ; — and  Physiognomy  founded  on  Physiology,  1834. 

126  Journal  des  Savants,  Juin,  1846;  p.  357. 

12J  De  la  Longiviti  Eumaine,  Paris,  1855;  pp.  106-161. 

128  Nott,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  chap.  xii.  and  p.  724,  notes,  cites  all  important  papers  of 

Dr.  Morton. 

129  Carl  Vogt,  Hohlerglaube .und  Wissenschaft,  Wiessen,  1855;  pp.  59-67. 

130  Osmond  de  Beauvoir  Priaxjlx,  Quaisliones  Mosaicce,  London,  1842  —  on  "breeding  in 

and  in,"  pp.  471-83. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  447 

lays) ; 131  but  in  no  case  do  I  affirm  by  employment  of  such  terms, 
whilst  in  most  cases  doubting,  with  the  illustrious  Humboldts,  the 
common  pedigree  of  any  two  of  such  types,  or  races,  back  to  a  mythic 
single  pair  called  "Adam  and  Eve." 

"Hence,  then,"  I  accept  Marcel  de  Serres's  rule,  disputing  only 
the  accuracy  of  the  facts  through  which  he  would  endeavor  to  elimi- 
nate mankind  from  its  action  —  "  generation  ought,  it  seems,  to  be 
considered  as  the  type  of  species,  and  the  only  foundation  upon  which 
it  can  be  established  in  a  certain  and  rational  manner  :"132  guarding 
it  with  the  language  of  the  learned  Colonel  Hamilton  Smith,133  viz : 
— that,  "  if  no  better  argument,  or  more  decisive  fact  can  be  adduced, 
than  that  axiom  which  declares,  that  '  fertile  offspring  constitute  the 
proof  of  identity  of  species,'  we  may  be  permitted  to  reply,  that  as 
this  maxim  does  not  repose  upon  unexceptionable  facts,  it  deserves 
to  be  held  solely  in  the  light  of  a  criterion,  more  convenient  in  syste- 
matic classification  than  absolutely  correct." 

Should  these  views  meet  with  favor  among  fellow-students  in  the 
Mortonian  school  of  ethnology,  it  will  become  (save  and  except  for 
their  always  meritorious  collection  of  facts)  almost  a  work  of  super- 
erogation to  inquire  what  individual  of  former  sustainers  of  the 
"  unity  of  the  human  species"  deserves  to  be  classified  under  the 
letter  B. 

Thus  Camper,134  Lacepede,135  Lesson,136  or  Griffith,137 — each  a  mas- 
ter in  mammalogy,  without  reference  to  their  copyists  innumerable, 
— are  maintainers  of  human  unity  of  species  on  zoological  grounds ; 
as  are  likewise  Walchnaer,138  Haller,139  Pitta,140  "Wagner,141  Bakker,142 

131  See  Blanchaed,  in  Dumoutier's  Anthropologic,  Paris,  1854,  pp.  18-9. 

132  Essaisur  les  Cavernes  a  Ossements,  Paris,  8vo.,  3d  ed.,  1838;  pp.  234,  268,  398. 

133  Natural  History  of  the  Human  Species;  Edinburgh,  12mo.,  1848;  p.  21 : — compare  Des- 

moulins  (Races  Humaines,  pp.  194-7),  for  certain  limits  of  this  law  of  generation. 

134  (Euvrcs  de  Pierre  Camper  qui  out  pour  objet  VHisioire  Nalurelle,  la  Physiologic  el  VAna- 

tomie  comparee,  Paris,  8vo.,  1803;  ii.  p.  453. 

135  Hisloire  Nalurelle  de  P  Homme,  Paris,  18mo.,  1821 ;  p.  183. 

136  Zoologie,  Paris,  1826,  4to. ;  i.  p.  34  — in  Duperrey,  Voy.  de  la  Coquille,  1822-5:  also, 

Ibid.  Races  Humaines,  in  Complement  des  (Euvres  de  Buffon,  Paris,  1828;  i.  p.  44. 

137  Translation  of  Cuvier's  Animal  Kingdom,  London,  4to.,  1827;  i.  Introd.  p.  xi. ;  and 

"Supplemental  History  of  Man,"  p.  178,  seq. 

138  Essai  sur  Phistoire  de  PEspece  humaine,  Paris,  8vo.,  1798,  p.  10; — and  Cosmologie,  ou 

Description  gener ale  de  la  Terre,  Paris,  8vo.  1816;  pp.  159-61. 

139  Elem.  Physiol.,  p.  vii.  lib.  xxviii.  \  xxii. 

140  Influence  of  Climate  on  the  Human  Species  and  on  the  varieties  of  Man  arising  from  it,  Lon- 

don, 8vo.,  1812;  p.  16. 

141  Nalurgeschichte  des  Menschen      Handbuch  der  popularen  anthropologic,  Hempten,  8vo., 

1831 ;  ii.  pp.  323-243. 

142  Natuur-en  Geschiedkundig  Onderzoek  aangaande  den  Oorspronkenlijkcn  stam  van  het  Men- 

schelifk  Geslachl,  Haarlem,  8vo.,  1810,  p.  176. 


448  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Serres,143  Herder,  Carpenter,  and  many  other  writers,  of  more  or  less 
note,  upon  physiological.  To  these,  although  his  proper  locus  standi 
should  be  under  the  letter  A,  may  be  added  Dr.  Hall,144  the  learned 
editor  of  Bonn's  London  edition  of  Pickering's  Races  of  Man.145 
An  eminent  and  far-travelled  naturalist,  accustomed  to  observe  facts 
and  weigh  evidence  equitably,  the  latter  has  maintained  strict  neu- 
trality in  describing  the  "  eleven  races  of  men  "  seen  by  himself : 
and  the  best  proof  of  the  high  value  attached  to  Dr.  Pickering's 
opinion,  no  less  than  of  his  impartiality,  is,  that  passages  of  his  work 
have  been  cited  by  Morton  in  support  of  diversity,  and  by  others  of 
the  unity  of  mankind. 

There  is  a  third  hypothesis  to  which  it  is  still  more  difficult  to 
assign  a  place.  Emanating  from  the  schools  of  transcendental  ana- 
tomy, none  but  embryologists  are  competent  to  discuss  its  mani- 
festations. Posited  in  the  language  of  Dr.  Knox,146  its  logical  conse- 
quences would  certainly  demonstrate  an  unity  of  human  origins ; 
but  upon  principles,  it  strikes  me,  more  disagreeable  to  theologers 
than  even  the  establishment  of  diversity  itself! 

"'There  is  but  one  animal,'  said  Geoffroy,  'not  many;'  and  to  this 
vast  and  philosophic  view,  the  mind  of  Cuvier  himself,  towards  the 
close  of  life,  gradually  approached.  It  is,  no  doubt,  a  correct  one. 
Applied  to  man,  the  doctrine  amounts  to  this,  —  Mankind  is  of  one 
family,  one  origin.     In  every  embryo  is  the  type  of  all  the  races  of 

148  Le  Moniteur,  Paris,  3  Fev.,  1855;  Feuilleton,  "Museum  d'histoire  naturelle — Cours 
d'Anthropologie  de  M.  Serres" — "  M.  Serres  a  declare  tout  d'abord  ses  convictions  en  ce  qui 
touche  Vuniti  humaine.  II  y  croit  fermement,  et  s'indigne  (!)  parfois  contre  eeux  qui  osent 
elever  la-dessus  1' ombre  d'une  doute."  This  virtuous  indignation  sits  well  on  the  author  of 
Analomie  comparee  du  Cerveau  dans  les  4  classes  des  Animaux  Verlebres  (Paris,  1824 — see  At- 
las, p.  40,  figs.  264,  266;  and  PI.  xiv.,  figs.  264-6),  who,  under  the  head,  which  he  was 
unable  to  procure,  of  an  "  encepbale  du  lion  (felis  leo)"  drawn  a  fourth  of  its  size,  actually 
substituted  that  of  a  cat ;  as  some  of  his  malicious  colleagues  of  the  Academic  des  Sciences 
proved  in  public  session ! 

i«  "An  Analytical  Synopsis  of  the  Natural  History  of  Man" — London,  12mo.,  1851 ;  pp. 
xxvii-xliii — being  a  sort  of  rifacimento  of  "Interesting  Facts  connected  with  the  Animal 
Kingdom ;  with  some  remarks  on  the  Unity  of  our  Species  "  (London,  8vo.,  1841 ;  pp.  93- 
102  ;  indeed,  passim  to  p.  206) : — which  appropriately  ends  with  a  saying  of  '-the  preacher, 

'  The  black  man  is  God's  image  like  ourselves  [!]  though  carved  in  ebony.' " 

Does  he  really  mean  what  he  says  ?  Has  he  ever  thought  of  the  converse  of  this  anti- 
quated Jewish  proposition  (Gen.  i.  26)  ?  If  so,  we  part  company  in  conceptions  of  Creative 
Power  (see  "Types,"  p.  564):  and  I  leave  our  preacher  to  translate  a  French  commentary 
— "  ' Dieu  crea  Vhomme  selon  son  image,'  et  Vkomme  le  lui  a  bien  rejidu!" 

145  United  States  Exploring  Expedition,  vol.  ix.,  Boston,  4to.,  1848. 

us  Races  of  Men,  Phil,  ed.,  1850;  pp.  297-8.  For  the  contrary  argument,  see  Notiveau 
Discours  sur  les  Revolutions  du  Globe,  par  Aj.  de  Gr.  et  P.  (translators  of  Lyell's  Principles 
of  Geology),  Paris,  1836 ;  ii.  pp.  36-47 — "  De  la  permanence  des  Especes,  en  d'autres  termes, 
jusqu'a  quel  point  les  especes  peuvent-elles  etre  modinees?" 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  449 

men ;  the  circumstances  determining  these  various  races  of  men,  as 
they  now,  and  have  existed,  are  as  yet  unknown ;  but  they  exist,  no 
doubt,  and  must  be  physical;  regulated  by  secondary  laws,  not 
changing,  slowly  or  suddenly,  the  existing  order  of  things.  The 
idea  of  new  creations,  or  of  any  creation  saving  that  of  living 
matter,  is  wholly  inadmissible.  *  *  *  In  conclusion :  the  permanent 
varieties  of  men,  permanent  at  least  seemingly  during  the  historic 
period,  originate  in  laws  elucidated  in  part  by  embryology,  by  the 
laws  of  the  unity  of  organization,  in  a  word,  by  the  great  laws  of 
transcendental  anatomy." 

Between  Dr.  Knox's  embryonic  suggestions,  and  the  "  develop- 
ment theory"  espoused  by  a  previous  defender  of  unity, m  it  is  not 
easy  to  strike  the  line  of  demarcation.  Certain,  however,  is  it 
that  this  brilliant  writer,  whatever  may  have  been  his  success,  in 
supplementary  editions  of  his  daring  book,  while  repelling  assaults 
upon  his  accuracy  in.  other  fields  of  speculative  science,  broke  down 
hopelessly  when  he  treated  on  mankind,  — the  authorities  cited  by 
him  being  sufficient  testimony  that  his  reading  on  ethnology  was 
exceedingly  limited;  and,  still  more  unfortunately,  it  is  patent  that 
through  assumption  of  a  single  origin  for  all  the  races  of  men,  he 
makes  humanity  itself  an  exception  to  the  so-called  law  of  organic 
development  which  his  antecedent  pages,  with  singular  ingenuity, 
had  endeavored  to  establish.  His  "unity"  becomes,  in  consequence, 
a  non-sequitur ;  whereas  (without  committing  myself  to  any  opinion 
on  a  theory  which  Agassiz149  pronounced  to  be  "contrary  to  all  the 
modern  results  of  science"),  had  the  author  of  "Vestiges"  sought,  in 
palseontological  discoveries  and  in  historical  inductions,  for  evidences 
that  sundry  inferior  races  of  men  preceded,  in  epoch,  the  superior,  I 
will  not  say  that  he  could,  eleven  years  ago,  have  proved  a  new  pro- 
position, of  which  science,  even  yet,  has  only  caught  some  glimmer- 
ings ;  but  he  would,  at  all  events,  have  satisfied  the  requirements  of 
consistency. 

Yet  another  monogenistic  point  of  view  has  been  recently  pre- 
sented,—to  myself,  however,  not  very  intelligible.  "  I  do  not,  there- 
fore,"150 writes  Dr.  Draper,  "  contemplate  the  human  race  as  consist- 

148  Vestiges  of  Creation,  New  York  ed.,  1845;  "Hypothesis  of  the  Development  of  the 
Vegetable  and  Animal  kingdoms;"  and,  for  man,  pp.  223-32,  compared  "with  p.  177. 

149  Types  of  Mankind,  "  The  natural  provinces  of  the  Animal  World,  and  their  relation  to 
the  different  types  of  Man,"  p.  Ixxvi: — republished  in  substance  by  Mr.  James  Hey  wood, 
M.  P.,  F.  R.  S. ;  as  an  Appendix  to  vol.  II,  of  his  translation  of  Von  Bohlen's  Genesis, 
1855,  and  with  the  usual  mistake  of  "  Hottentot  realm"  instead  of  "  Hottentot  fauna" 
(p.  278).  I  have  already  given  a  previous  instance  of  this  particular  oversight  in  our 
reviewers  (supra,  note  108) ;  as  we  proceed,  many  others  will  be  indicated. 

iso  Human  Physiology,  New  York,  1856,  pp.  565-6. 

29 


450  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

ing  of  varieties,  much  less  of  distinct  species ;  but  rather  as  offering 
numberless  representations  of  the  different  forms  which  an  ideal 
type  can  be  made  to  assume  under  exposure  to  different  conditions. 
I  believe  that  that  ideal  type  may  still  be  recognised,  even  in  cases 
that  offer,  when  compared  together,  complete  discordances ;  and  that, 
if  such  an  illustration  be  permissible,  it  is  like  a  general  expression 
in  algebra,  which  gives  rise  to  different  results,  according  as  we  assign 
different  values  to  its  quantities ;  yet,  in  every  one  of  these  results, 
the  original  expression  exists." 

My  own  aspirations,  tempered  by  dear-bought  experience  in  human 
speculation  on  the  unknown,  no  longer  rise,  nevertheless,  above  the 
historical  stand-point ;  and,  therefore,  with  regard  to  the  third  cate- 
gory, before  propounded,  viz. :  "  C.  — Unity  as  a  moral  or  metaphy- 
sical doctrine," — I  feel,  with  Jefferson,  "a  decent  respect  for  the 
opinions  of  mankind,"151  and,  consequently,  place  before  the  reader 
their  humanitarian  sentiments  rather  than  my  own. 

And  here  it  is  that  the  soul-inspiring  thoughts  of  the  Humboldts — 
which  truly  "puisent  leur  charme  dans  la  profondeur  des  senti- 
ments,"152 basing  their  high  moral  value  on  their  touching  elo- 
quence—  rival  St.  Paul's  eulogia  of  "love,"153  in  boundless  charity 
towards  all  mankind.  "  Without  doubt,"  says  Alexander  von  Hum- 
boldt, "  there  are  families  of  peoples  more  susceptible  of  culture,  more 
civilized,  more  enlightened ;  but  there  are  none  more  noble  than 
others.  All  are  equally  made  for  liberty,  for  that  liberty  which,  in  a 
state  of  society  but  little  advanced,  appertains  only  to  the  individual ; 
but  which,  among  those  nations  called  to  the  enjoyment  of  veritable 
political  institutions  [under  the  royal  House  of  Brandenburgh  ?]  is 
the  right  of  the  whole  community." iSt 

Then  "the  idea  of  humanity"  is  beautifully  developed  by  his  bro- 
ther William  —  "  This  is  what  tends  to  break  down  those  barriers 
which  prejudices  and  interested  motives  of  every  kind  have  erected 
between  men,  and  to  cause  humanity  to  be  looked  upon  in  its  ensem- 
ble, without  distinction  of  religion,  of  nation,  of  color,  as  one  great 
brotherhood,  as  a  single  body,  marching  towards  one  and  the  same 
goal,  the  free  development  of  the  moral  forces.    155  *  *  *  Rooted  in  the 

151  The  Declaration  of  Independence  of  the  United  States  of  America,  A.  D.  MDCCLXXVI. 
™  Cosmos,  Fr.  ed.,  I,  p.  431. 

153  Not  "  charity,"  which  is  copied  from  the  caritas  of  St.  Jerome's  Vulgate;  but  the  Greek 
original  dyinri. — Shaiu>e's  New  Testament,  from  Griesbach's  text;  pp.  323-4. — 1st  Up.  to  the 
Corinthians,  XIII,  1-13. 

154  Cosmos,  Fr.  ed.  (supra,  note  1) ;   I,  p.  430. 

155  Ibid,  pp.  430-1;  Sabine  translates,  from  the  German,  "the  free  development  of  their 
moral  faculties"  (I,  p.  356) :  Otte  renders,  "  the  unrestrained  development  of  their  physical 
powers"  (I,  p.  358) — sic!     The  original  text  is  in  W.  von  H.'s  Kawi-sprache,  III,  p.  426. 


THE    POLYGENISTS  451 

depths  of  human  nature,  commanded  at  the  same  time  by  its  most 
sublime  instincts,  this  beneficent  and  fraternal  union  of  the  whole 
species  becomes  one  of  the  grand  ideas  which  preside  over  the  history 
of  humanity." 

Possibly  in  the  future.  I  cannot  find  the  practice  of  such  "idea" 
by  any  nation  but  old  Okeanic  Utopians  in  the  past,  I  have  resided 
years  in  Africa,  Europe,  and  America,  months  in  Asia ;  and  indivi- 
dual experience  only  enhances,  to  my  mind,  the  virtue  of  this  law 
through  its  exceptions. 

A  more  sternly-philosophical  explanation  of  the  moral  unity  of 
mankind  is  that  put  forth  by  Agassiz.  It  somehow  accords  more 
closely  with  my  reason ;  not  less,  I  am  fain  to  hope,  with  my  social 
aspirations  than  the  prelauded  citation  from  Cosmos. 

"  "We  have  a  right  to  consider  the  questions  growing  out  of  men's 
physical  relations  as  merely  scientific  questions,  and  to  investigate 
them  without  reference  to  either  politics  or  religion. 

"  There  are  two  distinct  questions  involved  in  the  subject  which 
we  have  under  discussion, — the  Unity  of  Mankind,  and  the  Diversity 
of  Origin  of  the  Human  Races.  These  are  two  distinct  questions, 
having  almost  no  connection  with  each  other,  but  they  are  con- 
stantly confounded  as  if  they  were  but  one.  *  *  * 

"Are  men,  even  if  the  diversity  of  their  origin  is  established,  to  be 
considered  as  all  belonging  to  one  species,  or  are  we  to  conclude  that 
there  are  several  different  species  among  them?  The  writer  has 
been  in  this  respect  strangely  misunderstood.  Because  he  has  at 
one  time  said  that  mankind  constitutes  one  species,  and  at  another 
time  has  said  that  men  did  not  originate  from  one  common  stock,  he 
has  been  represented  as  contradicting  himself,  as  stating  at  one  time 
one  thing,  and  at  another  time  another.  He  would,  therefore,  insist 
upon  this  distinction,  that  the  unity  of  species  does  not  involve  a  unity 
of  origin,  and  that  a  diversity  of  origin  does  not  involve  a  plurality  of 
species.  Moreover,  what  we  should  now  consider  as  the  characteristic 
of  species  is  something  very  different  from  what  has  formerly  been 
so  considered.  As  soon  as  it  was  ascertained  that  animals  differ  so 
widely,  it  was  found  that  what  constitutes  a  species  in  certain  types 
is  something  very  different  from  what  constitutes  a  species  in  other 
types,  and  that  facts  which  prove  an  identity  of  species  in  some 
animals  do  not  prove  an  identity  or  plurality  in  another  group.  *  *  * 

"  The  immediate  conclusion  from  these  facts,  however,  is  the  dis- 
tinction we  have  made  above,  that  to  acknowledge  a  unity  in  man- 
kind, to  show  that  such  a  unity  exists,  is  not  to  admit  that  men  have 
a  common  origin,  nor  to  grant  that  such  a  conclusion  may  be  justly 


452  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

derived  from  sucn  premises.  "We  maintain,  therefore,  that  the  unity 
of  mankind  does  not  imply  a  community  of  origin  for  men ;  we 
believe,  on  the  contrary,  that  a  higher  view  of  this  unity  of  mankind 
can  be  taken  than  that  which  is  derived  from  a  mere  sensual  con- 
nection,— that  we  need  not  search  for  the  highest  bond  of  humanity 
in  a  mere  animal  function,  whereby  we  are  most  closely  related  to 
the  brutes.  *  *  * 

"  Such  is  the  foundation  of  a  unity  between  men  truly  worthy  of 
their  nature,  such  is  the  foundation  of  those  sympathies  which  will 
enable  them  to  bestow  upon  each  other,  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  the 
name  of  brethren,  as  they  are  brethren  in  God,  brethren  in  humanity, 
though  their  origin,  to  say  the  least,  is  lost  in  the  darkness  of  the 
beginning  of  the  world.  *  *  * 

"We  maintain,  that,  like  all  other  organized  beings,  mankind 
cannot  have  originated  in  single  individuals,  but  must  have  been 
created  in  that  numeric  harmony  which  is  characteristic  of  each 
species ;  men  must  have  originated  in  nations,  as  the  bees  have  ori- 
ginated in  swarms,  and  as  the  different  social  plants  have  at  first 
covered  the  extensive  tracts  over  which  they  naturally  spread.  *  *  * 

"  We  have  seen  what  important,  what  prominent  reasons  there  are 
for  us  to  acknowledge  the  unity  of  mankind.  But  this  unity  does 
not  exclude  diversity.  Diversity  is  the  complement  of  unity;  foi 
unity  does  not  mean  oneness,  or  singleness,  but  a  plurality  in  which 
there  are  many  points  of  resemblance,  of  agreement,  of  identity.  This 
diversity  in  unity  is  the  fundamental  law  of  nature.  It  can  be  traced 
through  all  the  departments  of  nature, — in  the  largest  divisions 
which  we  acknowledge  among  natural  phenomena,  as  well  as  in 
those  which  are  circumscribed  within  the  most  narrow  limits.  It  is 
even  the  law  of  development  of  the  animals  belonging  to  the  same 
species.  And  this  diversity  in  unity  becomes  gradually  more  and 
more  prominent  throughout  organized  beings,  as  we  rise  from  their 
lowest  to  their  highest  forms.  *  *  * 

"Those  who  contend  for  the  unity  of  the  human  race,  on  the 
ground  of  a  common  descent  from  a  single  pair,  labor  under  a 
strange  delusion,  when  they  believe  that  their  argument  is  favorable 
to  the  idea  of  a  moral  government  of  the  world,  and  of  the  direct 
intervention  of  Providence  in  the  development  of  mankind.  Uncon- 
sciously, they  advocate  a  greater  and  more  extensive  influence  in  the 
production  of  those  peculiarities  by  physical  agencies,  than  by  the 
Deity  himself.  If  their  views  were  true,  God  had  less  to  do  directly 
with  the  production  of  the  diversity  which  exists  in  nature,  in  the  vege- 
table as  well  as  in  the  animal  kingdom,  and  in  the  human  race,  than 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  453 

climatic   conditions,  and  the   diversity  of  food  upon  which  these 
beings  subsist." l56 

I  am  wholly  at  a  loss  in  what  category — whether  under  letter  A, 
or  B,  or  C,  or  anywhere  else — to  place  the  very  learned  Dr.  Latham 
(with  whose  books  ethnographers  are  of  course  familiar) ;  chiefly 
because  of  his  well-known  habit  of  commencing  a  paragraph  with 
an  asserted  fact,  the  value  of  which  he  generally  manages  to  undo 
at  its  close.  From  the  best  of  his  numerous  ethnological  "catalogues 
raisonnes,"  I  cull  an  illustration  through  which  the  reader  may  be 
able  to  understand  my  meaning,  even  should  he  fail,  perhaps,  in 
precisely  comprehending  the  Doctor's: 

"  If  we  now  look  back  upon  the  ground  that  has  been  gone  over, 
we  shall  find  that  the  evidence  of  the  human  family  having  origi- 
nated in  one  particular  spot,  and  having  diffused  itself  from  thence 
to  the  very  extremities  of  the  earth,  is  by  no  means  conclusive.  Still 
less  is  it  certain  that  that  particular  spot  has  been  ascertained.  The 
present  writer  believes  that  it  was  somewhere  in  intertropical  Asia 
[a  long  way,  consequently,  from  Mount  Ararat !],  and  that  it  was  the 
single  locality  of  a  single  pair  [Adam  and  Eve?]  —  without,  however, 
professing  to  have  found  it.  Even  this  centre  [of  the  author's  belief] 
is  only  hypothetical — near,  indeed,  to  the  point  which  he  looks  upon 
as  the  starting  point  of  the  human  migration,  but  by  no  means 
identical  with  it."  [!] ,57 

Sometimes  one  finds  that  a  thorough  monogenist  allows,  uncon- 
sciously perhaps,  an  observation  to  escape  him,  which  shows  how 
impressions,  derived  from  Calvinistic  primary  tuition,  become  irre- 
concilable, in  his  mature  age,  to  the  man  of  science. 

"The  data  of  Genesis,"  holds  Hollard,153  "commentated  upon  by 
a  poor  science,  devoid  of  criticism  and  ill-disciplined,  led  the  way  for 
those  rare  thinkers  who,  during  the  middle  ages,  attempted  to  under- 
stand Nature.  Too  commonly  the  commentary  bewildered  the  text. 
Of  all  conceptions  dating  from  that  period  [a  very  long  one,  and  not 
yet  ended],  what  has  had,  and  must  have  had,  the  greatest  success, 
is  the  doctrine  of  the  chain  of  beings,  —  formulated,  in  these  terms, 
by  Father  Meremberg : 

"  Nullus  hiatus,  nulla  fr  actio,  nulla  dispersio  formarum,  invicem  con- 
nexse  sunt  velut  annulus  annulo.  In  great  favor  among  the  naturalists 
of  'la  renaissance,'  this  doctrine  was  professed  with  eclat  by  Charles 
Bonnet,  at  the  end  of  last  century ;  and  this  philosopher  attached  to 
it  the  idea  of  a  palingenesiac  evolution  of  Nature.     It  would  have 

156  Aoassiz,  "  The  Diversity  of  origin  of  Human  Races,"  Christian  Examiner  and  Religious 
Miscellany,  Boston,  1850,  XLIX,  Art.  viii,  pp.  110,  113,  118-9,  120,  128,  133,  131. 
151  Latham,  Man  and  his  Migrations,  London,  12mo,  1851 ;  p.  248. 
"8  De  VHomme,  Paris,  1853,  pp.  13-4. 


454  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

greatly  scandalized  the  partisans  of  the  chain  of  beings  had  somebody 
taught  them  that,  owing  to  their  conception  of  Nature,  they  would 
one  day  shake  hands  with  the  greatest  enemies  of  the  Christian 
religion.  This  conception  is,  in  fact,  far  more  within  the  logic  of 
pantheism  than  that  of  our  (notre)  [Genevese]  religious  dogma. 

"  To  represent  the  three  realms  of  nature,  as  if  forming  but  one 
long  series  of  rings  linked  one  with  another,  a  succession  of  terms 
which  leave  no  interval  between  them  —  so  greatly  do  the  nuances 
melt,  and  transform  themselves,  the  ones  into  the  others — is,  whether 
one  wishes  it  or  repudiates  it,  whether  one  knows  it  or  be  ignorant 
of  it,  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  systems  which  substitute,  for  the 
thought  of  a  Providential  Creation,  that  of  an  animate  Nature 
(as  Aristotle  conceived  it),  —  a  Nature  which,  in  its  ascenscional 
effort,  would  traverse  all  the  imaginable  terms  of  a  continuous 
progression. 

"  True  or  false, — and  this  is  neither  yet  the  moment  for  absolving 
nor  for  condemning  it — the  doctrine,  which  I  have  just  characterized, 
must  have  been  heartily  welcomed  by  those  naturalists  who  pro- 
fessed, openly,  the  autonomy  of  Nature." 

I  need  not  beg  Dr.  Henry  Hollard's  pardon  for  classifying  his 
anthropology  under  letter  A ;  but  some  sort  of  an  apology  seems 
due  to  the  reader  for  my  stereotypical  inadvertence,  through  which 
a  learned  Protestant  Helvetian  happens  to  find  his  pious  sen- 
timents misplaced  in  that  part  of  this  work  consecrated  to  the 
letter  C. 

A  third  conception  may  be  gathered  from  passages  of  the  vast 
work  of  Gustave  Klemm.159  My  excellent  friend,  Dr.  L.  A.  Gosse, 
of  Geneva,160  pointed  them  out  to  me  during  our  joint  studies  at  the 
Museum  d'Histoire  Naturelle : 

"  It  is  tolerably  indifferent  whether  mankind  come  down  from  one 
pair  or  from  many  pairs ;  whether  some  first  parents  were  separately 
created  in  America,  in  Africa,  in  Asia,  and  in  Europe ;  or  whether 
the  population  of  all  these  regions  draws  its  origin  from  a  single 
couple  :  but  what  is  certain  is,  that  there  have  existed  on  this  earth 
passive  races  prior  to  the  active  races,  and  that  these  primitive  races 
had  multiplied  considerably  before  the  apparition  of  the  latter." 
He  enlarges  upon  the  distinctions  between  such  active  and  passive 

159  Allegemeine  Cultur-Oeschichle  der  Menschheit ;  1843-52,  Leipzig,  8vo.,  10  vols.;  I.  pp. 
196,  210. 

160  Honorably  and  widely  known  in  medical  sciences,  Dr.  Gosse,  whilst  favoring  me,  at 
Paris,  1854—5,  with  indices  to  knowledge,  as  well  as  infinite  other  proofs  of  his  generous  heart, 
published  his  erudite  Ussai  sur  les  Deformations  Artificielles  du  Crane.  Our  collaborator,  Dr. 
J.  Aitken  Meigs,  having  undertaken  its  analysis,  I  gladly  leave  to  him  a  subject  on  which 
the  nature  of  my  studies  excludes  valid  opinion. 


TliE    POLYGENISTS.  455 

races ;  deeming  these  last  to  have  been  the  darker  in  complexion, 
and  inferior  in  conformation,  and  in  their  rapidity  of  growth  to  have 
resembled  the  precocity  of  the  female  sex.  Hence,  Klemm  concludes 
that — "In  studying  the  manners,  usages,  monuments,  industry,  or- 
ganization, traditions,  creeds,  and  history  of  different  peoples,  I  have 
become  induced  to  admit,  that  all  humanity  which  forms  a  whole, 
like  man  himself,  is  separated  into  two  halves,  corresponding  with 
each  other,  one  active  and  one  passive,  the  one  masculine  and  the  other 
feminine." 

This  theory,  novel  to  most  readers  of  English,  may,  like  other 
theories,  be  true  or  false,  according  to  the  sense  in  which  the  words 
active  and  passive,  applied  to  ethnic  peculiarities,  are  comprehended 
by  those  who  employ  them.  To  me  their  application  is  not  clear, 
unless  qualified  by  stronger  adjectives ;  implying  the  recognition  of 
superior  and  of  inferior  races :  and,  in  such  sense,  M.  d'Eichthal's 
conception  of  the  difference  between  the  White  and  the  Negro  types 
is  curious  and  interesting : 161 

"  Thus,  gentlemen,  the  debate,  although  concentrated  upon  the 
African  question,  conducts  us  to  this  first  conclusion,  established,  ex- 
plicitly or  implicitly,  by  the  defenders  themselves  of  the  two  extreme 
opinions,  viz  :  that  the  African  negro  race  has  attained  its  present  civili- 
zation through  the  influence  of  the  ivhite  race,  notably  from  the  Arabs : 
that,  in  order  to  raise  itself  to  a  higher  civilization,  it  has  need  of  a  new 
initiation,  imparted  by  this  same  race:  that,  to  the  ivhite  race,  consequently, 
belongs  the  initiative  in  the  development  of  a  common  civilization.  It  is 
very  remarkable  that  Bitter,  at  the  end  of  his  work  on  the  Geo- 
graphy of  Africa,  casting  what  he  calls  a  retrospective  glance  over  the 
history  of  this  continent,  arrives  precisely  at  the  same  conclusion ; 
which  he  expresses  furthermore  in  terms  of  high  philosophical  bear- 
ing:— 'Must  it  be,'  asks  the  learned  geographer,  'that  civilization  is 
to  be  brought  from  the  exterior  and  inoculated,  so  to  say,  upon  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Soodan  (Negro-land),  because,  to  judge  accord- 
ing to  the  entire  development  of  history,  the  others  are  called  upon 
to  give,  and  these  to  receive?' 

"  Such  is,  in  fact,  the  abstract  expression  of  the  normal  relation 
between  the  black  race  and  the  white  race  ;  the  one  is  passive,  the 
other  active  in  respect  to  it.  *  *  *  '  The  black  shows  himself  to  us  as 
civilizable  [domesticable  ?],  but  without  the  initiative  faculty  in  point 
of  civilization.' "  *  *  *  "  Thus,  in  the  most  intimate  of  their  associa- 
tions [sexual  intercourse  between  white  males  and  black  females], 
these  two  races  preserve  the  character  which  we  have  recognized  in 

161  Bulletin  de  la  SociM  Ethnologique  de  Paris,  Tome  1",  Annfie  1847  ;  pp.  69-70,  77,  205, 
232-4,  239-241. 


456  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

the  ensemble  of  their  destinies.  The  white  race  is  Man;  the  black 
race  is  Woman.  ~Ho  formula  can  so  well  express  the  reciprocal  cha- 
racteristics and  the  law  of  association  between  the  two  races.  It  suf- 
fices moreover  to  explain  how  one  of  these  races  has  been  able  to  be 
initiator,  the  other  initiated ;  the  one  active,  and  the  other  passive  ; 
without  its  following  that  this  relationship  carries  with  it,  as  has  been 
maintained,  at  least  for  the  future,  on  the  one  side  superiority,  on 
the  other  inferiority." 

To  the  debate  itself  I  must  refer  for  a  controversy  conducted  on 
all  sides  with  rare  ability  and  scientific  decorum ;  my  own  views  find- 
ing expression,  generally,  in  the  ethnological  arguments  of  M.  Cour- 
tet  de  ITsle ;  to  be  cited  hereinafter.  Enough  has  now  been  set  forth 
on  the  unity  side  of  the  question  ;  and  the  reader  can  henceforward 
classify  any  less  important  monogenists  than  those  herein  enume- 
rated, into  category  A,  B,  or  C,  as  best  suits  his  appreciation  of  their 
merits. 

Inter  alia,  the  ultimate  philosophical  results  of  the  celebrated 
Academician  and  Professor,  Flourens,  whose  microscopic  examina- 
tion of  the  human  skin  in  different  races,  supposed  by  complacent 
clergymen  to  have  established  an  infallible  recipe  for  proving  the 
lineal  descent  of  all  mankind  from  "Adam  and  Eve,"  has  led  them,  in 
England  and  America,  almost  to  account  him  one  of  themselves. 
An  English  version,  however  literal,  fails  to  do  justice  to  the  piety 
and  logic  of  the  French  original. 

"  All  these  necessary  conditions,  so  admirably  combined  and  pre- 
pared for  the  precise  moment  when  life  was  to  appear,  prove  God, 
and  one  sole  God.  They  could  not,  seemingly,  have  been  two.  If 
they  had  been  two,  they  would  not  have  so  well  understood  each 
other — Us  ne  se  seraient  pas  si  Men  entendus.'nez 

Hitherto,  the  weight  of  authorities  quoted  has  been  altogether  on 
the  affirmative  side :  the  polygenists,  as  yet,  have  scarcely  had  a 
voice  on  the  negative.  To  them  the  next  section  will  be  devoted : 
audi  alteram  partem;  commencing  with  Berard,163  Professor  of  Physi- 
ology,— "I  cannot  suppose  that  a  mind  disengaged  from  prejudices, 
and  from  hinderances  which  certain  extra-scientific  considerations 
might  interpose  to  liberty  of  thought,  can  entertain  doubts  upon  the 
primitive  plurality  of  human  types." 

To  the  many  diversitarian  authorities  whose  language  has  been 
cited  in  Types  of  Mankind,  coupled  with  the  variety  of  polygenistic 
facts  accumulated  in  that  work  and  the  present,  there  would  seem 
little  reason  to  add  corroborative  testimony,  were  it  not  for  the  sake 

162  De  la  Longevity  Humaine,  Paris,  12mo.,  1855,  p.  238. 

163  Couts  de  Physiologic,  Paris,  8vo.,  1850,  1,  p.  463. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  457 

of  showing  how  the  advocates  of  this  new  school  are  rising  up  on 
every  side,  as  if  in  derision  of  theocratical  impediments.  I  will, 
therefore,  merely  select  two  whose  conclusions  are  arrived  at  hy  rea- 
soning from  different  starting-points.  Dr.  Prosper  Lucas  shall  he 
the  first,  as  one  who  has  studied  humanity  closest  in  its  generative 
laws.164 

"  The  psychological  diversity  of  races  is,  as  we  have  said,  as  tho- 
roughly demonstrated  as  their  physiological ;  and  this  diversity  bears 
upon  all  the  forms  of  human  dynamism.  All  the  races,  in  a  word, 
although  partaking  of  the  attributes  of  one  and  the  same  'species,' 
present  them  under  a  form  and  at  a  degree  which  are  properties  of 
each  of  them :  each  one  of  them  has  its  own  type  of  sensoriety,  its 
type  of  character,  its  type  of  intelligence,  its  type  of  activity.  ISTow, 
there  is  not  a  single  one  in  which  generation  does  not  delevope  sud- 
den anomalies  of  the  natural,  and  wherein  we  cannot  observe,  as  in 
the  physical  form  of  its  existence,  different  and  spontaneous  transi- 
tions of  the  moral  type  of  one  race  into  the  moral  type  of  another." 

M.  Blanchard  is  our  second,  no  less  than  the  expression  of  a 
duplex  authority, — his  own,  and  Dr.  Dumoutier's;  whose  anthropo- 
logical experiences  were  derived,  as  shown  by  his  splendid  Atlas,165 
from  accurate  attention  to  the  various  types  of  men  he  beheld  while 
circumnavigating  the  globe  with  Dumont  d'Urville,  and  whose  poly- 
genistic  opinions  were  frequently  elicited  at  the  meetings  of  the  So- 
ciete  Ethnologique  de  Paris.166 

"  Speaking  for  ourselves,  it  is  not  sufficient  to  admit  that  there 
are,  either  a  certain  number  of  races,  or  several  distinct  species ;  it 
becoming  necessary  to  ascend  still  higher.  In  order  that  the  ques- 
tion should  be  clearly  posited,  we  will  say  at  once  that,  to  our  eyes, 
there  exist  different  species  of  men ;  that  these  species,  very  proxi- 
mate to  each  other,  form  a  natural  genus;  and  that  these  species 
were  created  in  the  very  countries  in  which  we  find  them  at  present. 
En  resume,  the  creation  of  mankind  must  have  taken  place  upon  an 
infinitude  of  points  on  the  globe,  and  not  upon  a  single  point 
whence  they  have  spread  themselves,  little  by  little,  over  all  the 
surface  of  the  earth.  *  *  * 

"  Through  all  the  reasons  that  we  have  just  rapidly  set  forth,  we 
have  acquired  the  conviction,  that  the  human  genus  is  a  veritable 
genus,  in  the  sense  attached  to  this  word  by  naturalists,  and  that 
this  genus  comprises  several  species. 

164  Heredite  Nalurelle,  i.  pp.  160-1. 

165  Voyage  au  Pole  Sud,  Anthropologic,  Atlas,  fol.,  Paris,  1846;  cited  in  Types  of  Mankind, 
pp.  438,  &o. 

166  Bulletins,  1846-7. 


458  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

"  These  species  must  have  heen  necessarily  created  each  one  in 
the  country  in  which  it  was  destined  to  perpetuate  itself;  and  hence 
then,  we  must  admit,  at  the  origin,  a  considerable  number  of  foci 
(souches).  *  *  * 

"We  think,  with  DuGliS  (Traite  die  Physiologie),  that  mankind 
comprehends  a  great  number  of  species ;  but,  by  what  signs  these 
species  can  be  defined  in  an  indubitable  manner,  no  one,  in  the 
present  state  [of  science],  can  tell,  if  he  abstains  from  comparing 
only  the  most  dissimilar." 167 

But,  by  way  of  parenthesis,  as  explanatory  of  a  passing  comment 
on  "Vestiges  of  Creation,"  and  of  a  remark  by  Klemm  {supra,  pp. 
454-5),  that  inferior  human  races  seem  in  antiquity  to  have  pre- 
ceded the  superior,  there  are  data  which  here  may  find  place. 

16'  Blanchard,  Voyage  au  Pole  Sud,  corvettes  V Astrolabe  el  la  Zelee,  1837-40, — Anlhropo- 
logie,  par  M.  le  Docteur  Dumoutier,  Paris,  1854,  pp.  19,  45,  46. 

In  corroboration  of  what  a  far-travelled  Doctor,  M.  Dumoutieb,  says  above,  and  else- 
where, in  regard  to  the  creation  of  a  distinct  species  of  man  for  each  zoological  country; 
no  less  than  to  fortify  the  positions  sustained  by  my  collaborator  Dr.  Nott  (ante,  Chapter 
IV,  p.  547),  as  to  the  non-acclimation  of  races,  and  the  non-cosmopolitism  of  man  ;  I  sub- 
join an  extract  from  a  work  by  our  mutual  friend  Dr.  Boudin,  which  Dr.  Nott  had  mislaid 
when  his  MS.  was  sent  to  the  printer: 

"For  a  long  time  there  has  been  ascribed  to  man  the  faculty  of  adapting  himself  to 
every  climate,  and  the  power  of  establishing  his  residence  upon  all  points  of  the  globe. 
Such  credence,  reposing  upon  no  kind  of  experimental  basis  whatever,  could  merely  consti- 
tute but  a  simple  hypothesis ;  against  which,  now-a-days,  facts,  as  authentic  as  numerous, 
protest.  Perhaps  the  partisans  of  cosmopolitism  had  been  in  too  great  a  hurry  to  lend  to 
a  fraction  of  humanity,  represented,  by  what  it  has  been  agreed  upon  to  call,  the  'Cauca- 
sian' race,  that  which  may  very  well  not  belong  save  to  the  ensemble  of  mankind ; — perhaps, 
too,  they  had  not  sufficiently  discriminated  the  laboring  and  agricultural  man,  from  the 
mere  transitory  excursionist."  Thus,  in  order  to  prove  his  position,  Boudin  cites,  amongst 
other  examples, — how,  in  Egypt,  the  austral  negroes  are,  and  the  Caucasian  Memlooks 
were,  unable  to  raise  up  even  a  third  generation, — how,  in  Corsica,  French  families  vanish 
beneath  Italian  surnames.  Where  are  the  descendants  of  Romans,  or  Vandals,  or  Greeks, 
in  Africa?  In  modern  Arabia  (1830),  after  Mohammed  Ali  had  got  clear  of  the  Morea- 
war,  18,000  Arnaoots  (Albanians)  were  soon  reduced  to  some  400  men.  At  Gibraltar 
(1817),  a  negro  regiment  was  almost  annihilated  by  consumption.  In  1841,  during  three 
weeks  on  the  Niger,  130  Europeans  out  of  145  caught  African  fever,  and  40  succumbed; 
whilst,  out  of  158  negro  sailors,  only  11  were  affected,  and  none  died.  In  1809,  the  British 
Walchereen  expedition  failed,  in  the  Netherlands,  through  one  kind  of  marsh  fever;  about 
the  same  period  that,  at  St.  Domingo,  20  French  Generals,  and  15,000  rank  and  file,  died 
in  two  months  by  another  malarial  disease.  Of  30,000  to  32,000  Frenchmen,  but  some 
8000  survived  exposure  to  that  Antillian  island ;  while  the  Dominicanized  African  negro, 
Toussaint  l'Ouverture,  re-transported  to  Europe,  was  perishing  from  the  chill  of  his  prison 
in  France.      (Pathologie  compare'e,  Paris,  1849,  pp.  1-4). 

Again,  "already  the  facts  acquired  by  science  establish,  in  a  manner  irrevocable,  that 
the  diverse  races,  which  constitute  the  great  family  of  humanity,  obey  especial  laws,  under 
the  triple  aspect  of  birth,  mortality,  and  pathological  aptitudes."  France  uses  negro 
soldiers  at  Guyana  and  Senegal ;  England  employs,  like  the  Eomans  of  old,  the  natives  of 
each  colony,  to  perform  arduous  military  works- — confining  (cceteris  paribus)  for  all  hard 
labor,  tropical  soldiers  to  the  Tropics,  and  extra-tropically-born  soldiery  to  servile  duty, 


THE    POLYGENISTS.  459 


PART  II. 

Great  and  multifarious  are  the  changes  in  palaeontology,  as  in 
other  sciences,  since  Georges  Cuvier  wrote: 

"  That  which  astounds  is,  that  amongst  all  these  Mammifers,  of 
which  the  greater  part  possess  now-a-days  their  congeners  in  hot 
countries,  there  has  not  been  a  single  Quadrumane ;  that  there  has 
not  been  gathered  a  single  bone,  a  single  tooth  of  a  Monkey,  were 
they  but  some  bones  or  some  teeth  of  monkeys,  of  now-lost 
species."168 

Barely  five  years  after  the  decease,  in  1832,  of  this  grand  natu- 
ralist, fossil  Simiae  turned  up,  during  1837,  in  France  and  in  Hind- 
ostan ! 

In  eighteen  subsequent  years  of  exploration,  many  more  have 
been  discovered ;  enumerated  in  the  subjoined  works'69  as  genus 
Hapcile,  2  species ;  Gallithrix  primsevus  Protopithecus,  2 ;  Cebus,  1 ; 
found  in  South  America :  —  Macacus  eocoenus,  Pitheeus  antiquus,  2 
species,  &c. ;  in  England,  France,  or  in  the  Sub-Himalayan  range. 
Wagner  had  previously  indicated  the  existence  of  other  fossil 
monkeys  in  Greece ;  but  early  in  the  present  year,  M.  Gaudry 
reports  to  the  Academie  des  Sciences,  his  having  exhumed,  at  the 
"gite  fossilifere  de  Pikermi,"170  specimens  of  Mesopithecus  major 
and  Mesopithecus  pentelicus ;  mixed  up  with  remains  of  hyaena, 
mastodon,  rhinoceros,  hog,  hippotherium,  bos-marathonicus,  giraffe, 
and  probably  of  birds. 

Geologists  can  now  determine  the  relative  epochas  of  each  speci- 
men, according  to  the  formations  in  which  the  several  genera  of 
such  fossil  monkeys  appear;  but  De  Blainville  states  that,  while 
these  of  Brazil  are  more  recent,  being  met  with  in  the  diluvium  of 
caverns,  —  "those  of  India  and  Europe  lie  in  a  medium  tertiary 
fresh-water  deposit,  and  consequently  are  of  an  age  long  anterior  to 

only  where  the  climate  accords  with  that  of  their  race  and  birth-place.  At  Sierra  Leone, 
the  mortality  of  negroes,  compared  to  that  of  whites,  is  as  30  to  483 ;  i.  e.  as  1  against  16! 
{Physiologie  el  Pathologic  comparers  des  Races  humaines,  pp.  1-7). 

168  Discours  sur  les  Revolutions  de  la  surface  du  Globe,  Paris,  1830,  6th  ed.,  p.  351. 

169  Marcel  de  Serkes,  Essai  sur  les  Cavernes  a  Osseme?ils,  Paris,  8vo,  3d  ed.,  1838;  pp. 
226-7: — De  Blainville,  Osteographie,  "  Mammiferes-Priniates,"  Paris,  4to,  1841;  pp.  49- 
66:  —  D'Oreigny,  Diet.  Univ.  a" Hist.  Nat. ;  Paris,  1847;  X,  pp  669-70,  "Quadrumanes 
fossiles:" — Heck,  Iconographic  Encyclopedia,  transl.  Baird,  New  York,  1851;  II,  pp.  492- 
8: — Gervais-,  Trois  rignes  de  la  Nature,  Mammiferes,  Ie  partie,  Paris,  1854;  pp.  12-13. 

170  Letter  to  M.  Elie  de  Beaumont;  Alhenwum  Francais,  1  Mars,  1856;  pp.  167. 


400  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

the  last  catastrophe,  which  is  supposed  to  have  given  the  present 
shape  to  our  seas  and  our  continents." 

This  is  confirmed  by  a  curious  observation  of  Marcel  de  Serres,171 
that  while,  as  yet,  monkeys  have  been  found  "  only  on  the  ancient 
continent  in  the  fossil  state,  it  is  uniquely  in  the  humatile  state  they 
have  been  recognized  on  the  new." 

It  is,  therefore,  no  longer  contestable,  that  fossil  monkeys  exist, 
and  in  abundance.  Other  genera,  without  question,  will  be  dis- 
covered in  the  ratio  that  portions  of  the  earth,  and  by  far  the  most 
extensive,  become  accessible  to  the  geologist's  hammer.  Those 
barbarous  regions  which  living  anthropoid  monkeys  now  inhabit  — 
viz. :  Guinea,  Congo,  and  Loango,  where  the  Chimpanzee  [Troglo- 
dytes niger);  the  Gaboon  river-lands,  where  the  G-orilla  Crina;  and 
the  forests  of  Borneo  and  Sumatra,  where  two,  or  even  three  [supra, 
Agassizs'  letter],  species  of  the  Orang-utan  (Satyrus  rufus,  and 
Satyrus  bicolor);  are  found172 — being  at  present  wholly  inaccessible 
to  geological  investigation,  it  is  premature  to  affirm  or  deny  the 
existence  of  such  anthropomorphous  grades,  as  the  above,  between 
the  "genus  Homo"  or  bimanes,  and  those  lower  genera  of  quadru- 
manes  already  known  to  palaeontology,  in  the  fossil  state.  Such 
a  discovery  would  fortify,  although  its  absence  does  not  affect,  the 
propositions  I  am  about  to  submit. 

Leaving  aside  De  Lamark's  much-abused  development-theory,173 
all  naturalists  agree  that,  whether  in  the  incommensurable  cycles  of 
geological  time  anterior  to  our  planet's  present  condition,  or  during 
the  chronologically-indefinable  period  that  mankind  have  been  its 
later  occupants,  there  is  a  manifest  progression  of  organism  upwards 
from  the  Eadiata  to  the  Articulata,  from  these  to  the  Mollusca,  and 
again  from  these  last  to  the  Vertebrata.174  At  the  summit  of  verte- 
brated  animals,  after  ascending  once  more  through  the  Fishes,  the 
Reptiles,  the  Birds,  and  the  Mammifers,  stands  Man,  himself  the 
highest  of  the  mammalian  division  —  "sole  representative  of  his 
genus"  if  Prof.  Owen  pleases,  but  composed,  -notwithstanding,  of 
many  distinct  types,  each  subdivisible  into  many  races. 

Now,  whether  we  look  up  or  down  the  tableau  of  living  nature,  or 
drag  out  of  the  rocky  bowels  of  our  earth  the  whole  series  of  fossil 
animals  known  to  palaeontology,  nearest  to  mankind,  among  marn- 

171  Cosmogonie  de  Mo'ise  compare'es  aux  fails  ge'ologiques,  Paris,  8vo,  2d  ed.,  1841 ;  I,  pp. 
162-7. 

172  Chenu,  Encyclopedic  d'Histoire  Naturelle,  vol.  "  Quadrumanes,"  Primates;  pp.  30-52. 

173  Generously  explained  by  Haldeman,  Recent  Freshwater  Mollusca  (supra),  pp.  6-8. 

174  See  the  Regne  Animal  de  M.  le  Baron  Cuvier,  dispose  en  Tableaux  methodiques  par  I. 
Aohille  Comte,  Paris,  fol.  1840;  1st  Plate,  "Introduction." 


THE     POLYGERISTS.  461 

malia,  in  every  feature  of  organization,  spring  up  the  Monkeys  in 
bold  relief;  as  Man's  closest  sequence  in  the  descending  scale  of  zoo- 
logical gradation;  and,  likewise,  so  far  as  science  yet  has  ascertained, 
as  one  of  Man's  immediate  precursors  in  the  ascending  line  of  our 
planet's  chronology.  Each  of  these  two  points,  however,  requires 
some  elucidation,  in  order  to  eschew  deductions  that  are  not  mine. 
For  the  first,  one  reference  will  explain  the  view  I  concur  in ;  it  is 
G-ervais's.175 

"  We  know  nothing  well  except  through  comparison,  and,  in  order 
to  compare  objects  correctly,  one  must  begin  by  placing  them  near 
together.  This  is  not  to  say  that  Man  is  a  Monkey,  and  still  less 
that  a  Monkey  is  a  Man,  even  degraded;  because,  upon  studying 
with  care  the  one  and  the  other,  it  will  be  recognized  without  diffi- 
culty that  if  Man  resembles  the  highest  animals  [the  Primates], 
through  the  totality  of  his  organization,  he  differs  from  them  above 
all  in  the  details ;  and  that,  even  more  endowed  than  the  greater 
number  of  these  in  almost  every  respect,  he  surpasses  them  essen- 
tially by  the  very  perfection  of  his  structure.  His  brain,  as  well  as 
his  intelligence,  assigns  him  a  rank  apart.    He  is  indeed,  as  Ovid  says, 

Sanctius  his  animal,  mentisque  capaoius  altse. 

It  is  well  known,  on  the  other  hand,  that,  to  Linnseus  and  his  con- 
temporaries, the  limits  of  genus  were  much  less  narrowed  than  they 
are  for  naturalists  of  our  day.  The  generic  union  of  Man  and  of  other 
\sic\  Monkeys  would  be,  therefore,  at  the  present  state  of  science, 
entirely  contrary  to  the  rules  of  classification.  *  *  *  "(Monkeys)  are 
easily  recognized  by  their  organization,  of  which  the  principal  traits 
accord  with  those  that  the  human  genus  displays  in  such  an  elevated 
degree  of  perfection.  Their  brain  and  their  other  deeply-placed 
organs;  their  exterior  appearance,  and,  especially,  the  form  of  then' 
head ;  the  position  and  number  of  their  teats ;  their  thumbs  at  the 
superior  members,  more  frequently  than  not  opposable  to  the  other 
fingers ;  their  station  approaching  more  and  more  the  vertical,  but 
without  ever  reaching  it  completely;  and  a  certain  community  of  intel- 
lectual aptitudes;  everything,  in  these  animals,  announces  an  incon- 
testable resemblance  with  Man,  and  a  superiority  as  regards  other 
quadrupeds.  Albeit,  this  similitude  diminishes  in  proportion  as  one 
descends  through  the  series  of  genera  that  compose  the  family  of 
Monkeys ;  and,  whilst  ever  preserving  the  fundamental  traits  of  the 
group  to  which  they  belong,  the  lowest  species  [the  Ouistites,  for  in- 
stance] show  by  their  intelligence  as  much  as  by  their  brain,  in  their 

175  Hist.  Nat.  des  MammiferZs,  pp.  49,  and  7-8. 


462  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

shapes  as  well  as  in  the  structure  of  their  principal  organs,  an  evident 
inferiority,  if  one  compares  them  with  the  Primates.,  and  beyond  all 
with  Man." 

Science,  therefore,  at  the  present  hour,  ceases  to  go  back  to  the 
long-exploded  and  (considering  the  epoch  of  its  advocates)  over-sati- 
rized notions  of  Monboddo,  Rousseau,  or  Moscati.176  Such  historical 
theory  only  continues  to  afford  pabulum  for  homily- writers,  who, 
groping  still  amidst  Auguste  Comte's177  sub-metaphysical  strata, 
imagine,  not  perhaps  unreasonably,  that  some  of  their  readers  have 
learned  nothing  since  the  XVLTIth  century.  Even  in  the  time  of 
Voltaire — to  whom  men  merely  seemed  to  be  so  many  monkeys 
without  tails — of  the  apparently  tail-less  quadrumana  (Orang,  Chim- 
panzee, and  Gorilla),  but  one  species  (except,  of  course,  Tyson's 
Chimpanzee,  1698,178  and  Buffbn's,  1740)  was  known  to  France ; 
and  that  one,  the  Orang-utan, — belonging  to  the  prince  of  Orange, 
1776  —  too  imperfectly  for  him  to  perceive,  between  the  "  lord  of 
creation"  and  his  caricature,  a  still  closer  analogy:  or,  again,  for  the 
immortal  bugbear  of  pseudo-pietists  to  comprehend  that,  if  the 
absence  of  such  exterior  appendage  in  the  above  three  primates  does 
not  the  more  constitute  a  true  "monkey,"  neither  does  its  presence, 
in  the  several  authentic  examples  cited  by  Lucas,179  the  less  consti- 
tute a  true  "man."  So  that,  while  man,  as  "the  sole  representative 
of  his  genus,"  possesses  no  tail,  there  are  individual  instances  that 
bring  the  case  much  nearer  home  than  the  interesting  fact  for 
which  the  latest  English  partisan  of  successive  transformations 1S0  en- 
countered obloquy ;  viz. :  that  "  the  bones  of  a  caudal  extremity  exist, 
in  an  undeveloped  state,  in  the  os  coccygis  of  the  human  subject." 
Why,  if  such  "  deviations"  as  that  melancholy  case  of  the  "porcupine 
family,"  or  those  worn-out  specimens  of  "  sexidigital  individuals," 

176  Zimmerman,  Zool.  geog.,  p.  194. 

1,7  Cours  de  Philosophic  Positive,  Paris,  1830;  I,  pp.  3-5. 

178  Martin,  Man  and  Monkeys,  London,  8vo.,  1841 ;  pp.  379  and  402. 

179  Heredite  Nalurelle,  I,  pp.  319-20 :— referring  to  Serres,  and  to  Is.  Geof.  Saint  Hilaire. 
"Le  deVeloppement  congenial  de  cet  appendice  (a  tail)  se  lie  en  effet  au  rapport  tres-con- 
stant,  qu'il  (Serres)  a  demontre',  entre  revolution  de  la  moelle  epiniere  et  celle  de  la  queue. 
La  moelle  epiniere  se  prolonge,  dans  l'origine,  jusqu'a  l'extrtjmite'  du  canal  vertebral,  chez 
tous  les  animaux  de  la  classe  ou  il  existe,  et  tous,  a  cette  e"poque  de  la  vie  embryonaire,  se 
trouvent  ainsi  munis  d'une  queue  plus  ou  moins  longue  selon  qu'ulterieurement,  et  d'apres 
les  especes,  le  prolongement  de  la  moelle  se  maintient  ou  se  retire,  l'axe  vertebral  est  ou 
n'est  pas  pourvu  d'un  appendice  caudal.  *  *  *  Et  il  arrive  ainsi  quelquefois  (says  I.  G. 
St.  Hilaire)  que  la  moelle  epiniere,  conservant  sa  premiere  disposition,  s'e'tende  encore, 
chez  rbomme,  au  moment  de  la  naissance,  jusqu'a  l'extre'mite'  du  coccyx.  Dans  ce  cas,  la 
colonne  vertebrale  reste  termine'e  par  nne  queue." 

180  Vestiges  of  Creation,  1st  New  York  edition,  12mo,  p.  148.  In  speaking  of  "apparently 
tail-less  monkeys,"  it  may  be  well  to  refer  to  the  skeletons  of  Orang-satyrus,  Troglodytes 
niger,  and  Gorilla  Gina,  in  Gervais,  op.  tit.,  pp.  14,  26,  32. 


THE     POL  YGENIST  S.  463 

have  been  paraded  by  every  monogenist,  from  Zimmerman18'  to  Pri- 
chard,183  in  proof  of  how  a  new  race  of  men  might,  according  to  them, 
originate  —  why,  I  repeat,  do  they  not  observe  consistency  of  argu- 
ment, whilst  always  violating  their  own  law  of  "species"' — i.e.,  per- 
manency of  normal  type — and  allow  that  a  Parisian  saddler,183  or  the 
late  Mr.  Barber  of  Inverness,181  might  and  ought  to  have  procreated 
entire  generations  of  new  human  "species"  with  tails  ?  Partial  is  the 
unity-school  to  natural  analogies,  accusing  polygenists  of  tendency 
to  disregard  them.  Our  "  chart  of  Monkeys,"  further  on,  will  at 
least  show  that  I  am  not  obnoxious  to  this  grave  charge. 

In  the  interim,  there  are  but  two  living  savans,  that  I  am  aware  of 
—  the  one  a  naturalist  and  courageous  voyager;185  the  other,  if  not 
exactly  an  archaeologist,  a  much  more  famous  champion  of  ortho- 
doxy,186—  who  believe  in  the  existence,  past  or  present,  of  whole 
nations  decorated  with  tails.  The  former,  when  at  Bahia,  heard,  from 
the  veracious  lips  of  imported  Haoussa  negroes,  of  the  "  Niams- 
Niams,m  oil  hommes  a  queue;"  who  still  whisk  their  tails  in  Africa, 
about  thirteen  days' journey  from  Kano  (not  far  from  that  Island 

181  Op.  cit.,  p.  172. 

182  Researches  into  the  Physical  History  of  Man,  1st  edition,  1813;  pp.  72-5:  —  In  the  2d 
edition  (op.  cit.,  1826,  I,  pp.  204-7),  Prichard  found  out  that  the  "porcupine  family"  was 
flourishing  in  its  3d  generation ! 

183  Lucas,  op.  cit.,  I,  pp.  137-8,  320-2.  Instances  of  homines  caudali:  the  celebrated 
corsair  Cruvillier  de  la  Cioutat,  of  a  negro  named  Mohammed,  of  a  French  officer,  of  M. 
de  Barsabar  and  his  sister,  and,  lastly,  of  an  attorney  at  Aix,  surnamed  Berard,  whose 
tail  had  (as  in  the  case  Schenckii  Monslror.  hist,  memorab.,  II,  34)  the  curly  shape  of  a 
pig's. 

181  Compare  Monboddo,  Of  the  Origin  and  Progress  of  Language,  Edinburgh,  8vo,  2d  ed., 
1774;  I,  pp.  258-69,  for  the  men  with  long  tails  at  Nicobar!  But  the  following  is  less 
apochryphal:  "And  I  could  produce  legal  evidence,  by  witnesses  yet  living,  of  a  man  in 
Inverness,  one  Barber,  a  teacher  of  mathematics,  who  had  a  tail,  about  half  a  foot  long, 
which  he  carefully  concealed  during  his  life ;  but  was  discovered  after  bis  death,  which 
happened  about  twenty  years  ago."     (P.  262,  note.) 

185  De  Castelnau,  in  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  de  Geographic,  Paris,  Juillet,  1851,  p.  26.  Camels, 
it  is  well  known,  were  not  introduced  into  Africa  until  Ptolemaic  times  (Types  of  Mankind, 
pp.  254,  511-13,  729).  Those  seen  by  M.  de  Castelnau's  narrator,  close  by  "les  hommes 
a  queue,"  must  have  been  stray-aways  from  Tuarik,  Foolah,  or  Arab  encampments;  be- 
cause no  Negro  race  has  ever  perceived  the  value  of  this  animal,  nor  adopted  its  use, 
although  for  centuries  employed  against  them  by  their  surrounding  oppressors ;  thus  allow- 
ing a  stupid  repugnance  to  testify  to  their  own  intellectual  inferiority  (Conferre  d'Eichthal, 
Eisl.  et  Origine  des  Foulahs,  Paris,  8vo.,  1841 ;  pp.  259-60,  note). 

>»  Paravet,  op.  cit.,  1852,  pp.  34,  501. 

m  These  "Niams-Niams"  are  fabulous  (like  the  Yahoo  enemies  of  the  virtuous  Houy- 
hnhnms)  African  cannibals,  by  different  Negro  tribes  "severally  called  Bcmrem,  Lemlem, 
Demdern,  Yemyem,  or  N'yumn'um"  (W.  Desbokotjgh  Cooley,  Negro-land  of  the  Arabs,  1841 ; 
pp.  112,  135:  Gijddoh,  Oiia  JEgypliaca,  London,  1849;  p.  125,  note).  Since  this  was 
written,  I  hear  that  M.  Tremaux,  the  latest  explorer  of  the  upper  Nile  (with  Brun-Rollet, 
a  Sardinian  merchant  at  Khartoom),  has,  still  more  recently,  exploded  the  notion  of  "la 
hommei  &  queue"  in  that  region  also. 


464  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

visited  by  Mr.  Gulliver,  in  his  "Voyage  to  the  Houyhnhnms") ;  where 
our  naturalist's  informants  had  also  beheld  "wild  camels."  The 
latter,  senior  among  "MM.  les  Membres  de  l'lnstitut,"  as  well  as  free 
from  any  sins  but  Sinology,  happening  to  meet  in  Paris  with  a  negro 
of  singular  conformation,  compares  him  with  perfectly  authentic 
block-printed  plates  of  ancient  foreign  nations  in  Mongolia,  known 
to  Chinese  encyclopedists  before  an  Encyclopxdia,  or  even  a  geogra- 
phical dictionary,  had  been  struck  off  in  Europe.  A  copy  of  this 
work,  the  Sau  Tsai  Too  Hwyy,  is  in  the  possession  of  my  valued  col- 
league M.  Pauthier,  the  historian  of  China ;  with  whom  I  have  en- 
joyed a  laugh  over  its  numerous  designs  of  men  with  tails,  while  he 
read  me  the  text ;  which,  being  in  Chinese  ideographics,  does  not 
strictly  fall  within  Voltaire's  malicious  definition — "Les  dictionnaires 
geographiques  ne  sont  qire  des  erreurs  par  ordre  alphabetique."  Mr. 
Birch  was  so  kind,  subsequently,  as  to  show  me  another  copy  in  the 
library  of  the  British  Museum.168 

For  the  second  proposition,  viz :  that,  in  palaeontology,  monkeys 
appear  to  be  the  forerunners  of  man,  a  more  serious  tone  of  analysis 
must  be  adopted. 

"We  have  seen  how  Cuvier,  at  his  demise  in  1832,  did  not  antici- 
pate the  discovery,  made  five  years  later,  of  fossil  monkeys ;  which 
has  since  established,  in  several  gradations  of  genera  and  of  epoch,  a 
link  between  extinct  quadrumanes  and  living  bimanes.  Inasmuch  as 
that  great  Naturalist,  correct  in  his  deductions  from  the  data  known 
to  him,  committed  an  error,  as  it  turned  out  afterwards,  about  fossil 

188  This  is  one  of  the  Sinie  authorities  (as  quoted,  that  is,  by  De  Gtjignes)  just  referred 
to  by  an  eloquent  divine,  at  Hope  Chapel,  New  York,  in  his  2d  lecture  on  "The  Ethnology 
of  America,"  wherein  he  proves  that  our  American  Indians  are  only  a  colony,  "450  and  500" 
A.D.,  of  Hindostanic  Budhists,  since  run  wild!     (New  York  Herald,  Feb.  6,  1857.) 

In  order  to  remove  at  once  any  latent  suspicion  that,  at  the  present  day,  erudition  is 
necessary  to  know  every  piece  of  nonsense  that  has  been  written  on  the  ante-Columbian 
colonization  of  America  from  any  part  of  the  world — Chinese,  Tartar,  Japanese,  Israelitish, 
Norwegian,  Irish,  Welsh,  Gaulish,  Hi'spanian,  Polish,  Polynesian,  Phoenician,  Atalantic,  &c, 
&c. — let  me  refer  critics,  who  may  be  acquainted  only  with  French,  to  "  Recherches  sur  les 
Antiquite's  de  l'Arnerique  du  Nord  et  de  PAmerique  du  Sud,  et  sur  la  population  primitive 
de  ces  deux  continents,  par  M.  D.  B.  Warden,"  formerly  the  very  learned  U.  S.  Consul  at 
Paris, —  in  the  folio  Anliquiles  Mezicaines  (see  Pulszky's  Chap.  II,  p.  183,  ante).  Humboldt 
had  written  long  previously —  "It  cannot  be  doubted,  that  the  greater  part  of  the  nations 
of  America  belong  to  a  race  of  men,  who,  isolated  ever  since  the  infancy  of  the  world  from 
the  rest  of  mankind  [and  how,  during  such  infancy,  could  the  fathers  of  American  Indians 
come  here  from  Mount  Ararat?],  exhibit,  in  the  natural  diversity  of  language,  in  their 
features,  and  the  conformation  of  their  skull,  incontestable  proofs  of  an  early  and  complete 
separation."  (Researches  concerning  the  Institutions  and  Monuments  of  the  ancient  Inhabitants 
of  America,  London,  1814,  I,  pp.  249-50.)  Through  the  3d  Lecture  (New  York  Herald, 
Feb.  9,  1857),  I  perceive  how,  even  at  this  date,  it  is  not  yet  known,  in  New  York,  that  the 
comicalities  about  the  god  "Votan"  alias  "Ballani,"  are  merely  the  pious  inventions  of 
an  illiterate  Jesuit  priest !     On  whom  hereafter. 


THE     POLTGENISTS  465 

monkeys,  may  lie  not  have  also  made  another  in  regard  to  fossil 
man  ?     His  convictions  were : 189 

"  There  is  not  either  any  man  [among  these  fossil-bones] :  all  the 
hones  of  our  species  that  have  been  collected  with  those  of  which  we 
have  spoken  found  themselves  therein  accidentally,  and  their  num- 
ber is  moreover  exceedingly  small ;  which  would  not  assuredly  have 
been  the  case  if  men  had  made  establishments  in  the  countries  inha- 
bited by  these  animals.     Where  then  at  that  time  was  mankind  ?" 

We  cannot  answer  decisively,  as  yet — "  with  those  monkeys,  to  be 
sure,  whose  fossil  and  humatile  remains,  unrevealed  to  Cuvier,  have 
been  since  discovered ;"  but  this  much  we  can  do, — show  that  while, 
on  the  one  hand,  later  researches  have  vastly  extended  Cuvier's  nar- 
row estimate  of  the  antiquity  of  mankind  upon  earth ;  on  the  other, 
the  gradations  of  epoch  and  of  species,  from  the  tertiary  deposits 
where  fossil  simiee  are  found  in  Europe,  upwards  to  recent  formations 
in  which,  according  to  a  preceding  remark  of  Marcel  de  Serres,  those 
humatile  monkeys  have  turned  up  in  America,  there  is  a  gradual  pro- 
gression of  "species"  that  brings  these  last  nearly  to  specific  identity 
with  some  of  those  simiee  platyrhinm  living  in  Brazilian  forests  at 
the  present  day. 

We  can  do  more.  After  obtaining  an  almost  unbroken  chain  of 
osteological  samples,  from  living  species  of  callithrix  and  pithecus  in 
Sduth  America,  back  to  Lund's  callithrix  primosvus  and  protopithicus 
of  humatile  Brazilian  deposits,  and  thence  upwards  through  the 
various  extinct  genera  of  simiee  catarrhinee  found  in  a  true  fossil  state 
in  Europe  and  Hindostan;  we  are  enabled,  upon  turning  round  and 
looking  at  the  ascending  scale  of  relative  antiquity  in  human  remains, 
—  from  the  Egyptian  pyramid  to  the  Belgian  and  Austrian  bone- 
caverns,  from  Scandinavian  and  Celtic  barrows  to  the  vestiges  of 
man's  industry  extant  in  French  diluvial  drift,  and  from  the  old  Ca- 
ribsean  semi-fossilized  skeletons  of  Guadaloupe,  coupled  with  the 
Brazilian  semi-fossilized  crania  (Lund)190  as  well  as  with  the  semi- 
fossilized  human  jaws  of  Florida  (Agassiz,  in  "Types"), — to  esta- 
blish, for  man's  antiquity,  two  points,  parallel  in  some  degree  with 
what  has  been  done  for  that  of  the  simiee,  viz :  1st,  That  the  exist- 
ence of  mankind  on  earth  is  carried  back  at  least  to  the  humatile 
stage  of  osseous  antiquity  on  both  old  and  new  continents ;  and  2d, 
that,  by  strange  and  significant  coincidence,  like  the  genera  callithrix 
and  pithecus,  the  living  species  and  the  dead,  in  Monkeys,  all  huma- 
tile specimens  of  Man  in  America  correspond,  in  race,  with  the  same 

189  Discours  sur  les  Revolutions,  pp.  351-2,  and  131-9. 

190  "Notice  sur  les  ossements  humaines  fossiles,  trouvfe  ilans  line  Caverne  du  Br&il" — 
Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  K.  des  Antiquaires  du  Nord,  1845-9,  pp.  49-77.. 

30 


466  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

aboriginal  Indian  group  still  living  on  this  continent.     Such  is  what 
will  be  attempted  in  the  following  pages. 

But,  before  proceeding,  we  must  rid  ourselves  of  some  precon- 
ceived encumbrances  about  chronology ;  because  "there  are  persons 
in  America  *  *  * ;  persons  whose  intellects  or  fancies  are  employed 
in  the  contemplation  of  complicated  and  obscure  theories  of  human 
origin,  existence,  and  development — denying  the  very  chronology 
which  binds  man  to  G-od,  and  links  communities  together  by  indisso- 
luble moral  obligations."  "Pretty  considerable"  performances  for 
Mr.  Schoolcraft's  "  chronology"  !191 

Our  national  Didymus  and  XAAKENTEPOS — he,  too,  of  brazen 
bowels,  in  literary  fabrication — believing  that  "the  heavens  and  the 
earth"  were  created  exactly  at  six  o'clock  on  Sunday  morning.  (1st 
day),  in  the  month  of  September,  at  the  equinox  of  the  year  b.  c. 
4004, m  would  be  much  distressed  if  he  knew  what  his  only  patron- 
izer's  (Chevalier  Bunsen's)  opinion  is,  viz. — "  That  a  concurrence  of 
facts  and  of  traditions  demands,  for  the  iNbaehian  period,  about  ten 
millennia  before  our  era ;  and,  for  the  beginning  of  our  race,  another 
ten  thousand  years,  or  very  little  more." 193 

The  startling  era  claimed,  in  1845,  by  Bunsen,  for  Egypt's  first 
Pharaoh,  Menes,  b.  c.  3643,  sinks  into  absolute  insignificance  before 
the  20,000  years  now  insisted  upon  by  him  for  man's  terrestrial 
existence.  Palaeontologists  of  the  Mortonian  school  will  cheerfully 
accept  Bunsen's  chronological  extension,  notwithstanding  their  in- 
ability to  comprehend  the  process  by  which  the  learned  German 
obtains  that  definite  cipher,  or  the  reason  why  the  human  period 
should  not  be  prolonged  a  few  myriads  of  years  more.  Brought 
down  nearer  to  our  generation  it  cannot,  without  violating  all  rea- 
sonable induction  regarding  the  ante-monumental  state  of  Egypt ; m 
no  less  than  from  the  remote  era  assigned  by  Prof.  Agassiz195  to 
the  conglomerate,  brought  to  his  cabinet  from  Florida,  inclosing 
human  "jaws  with  perfect  teeth,  and  portions  of  a  foot." 

191  Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes  of  the  United  States,  Philadelphia,  elephant  4to,  1854 
— "  Ethnographical  researches  concerning  the  Red  Man  in  America ;"  Fourth  Report,  p.  ix. 

182  Rev.  Dr.  Lightfoot,  Harmony  of  the  Foure  Evangelistes,  London,  1644 ;  Part  I,  last 
page.  1st,  Compare  Basnage  [Hist,  and  Religion  of  the  Jews,  pp.  107-8),  on  the  disputations 
between  the  Carai'tes  (lileralists)  and  the  Rabbinists  (traditionists),  whether  the  world  was 
created  in  March  or  in  September :  2d, —  if  it  be  desired  to  ascertain  on  what  grounds 
the  rabbis  make  the  1st  Sept.  the  day  of  creation,  the  solution  is  R.  Jacoub's  Baal  Halurim 
(printed  at  Venice,  1540) ;  who  proves  it  through  the  Kabbala  on  the  first  word  of  Genesis, 
BeReSAITA — because,  on  transposing  letters,  Aleph  is  equivalent  to  "first,"  and  be  tisri 
means  "in  September"!     (Richard  Simon,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  882.) 

193  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  History,  London,  1854 ;  II,  p.  12. 

194  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  687-9. 

195  Op.  cit.,  pp.  352-3. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  467 

"With  respect  to  Nilotic  alluvials,  my  suggestion  of  geological 
researches196  has  heen  wrought  out,  since  1851,  by  an  old  Egyptian 
colleague,  Hikekyan-Bey,  one  of  Seid  Pasha's  civil  engineers,  with 
effective  government  aid,  at  Heliopolis  and  Memphis,  under  direc- 
tion of  Mr.  Leonard  Horner,  of  the  Royal  Society,197  which  placed  a 
liberal  grant  of  money  at  this  gentleman's  disposal.  Father-in-law 
of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  and  father  of  the  accomplished  ladies  who 
translated  Lepsius's  Briefe  aus  JEgypten,  ^thiojrien,  &c.,198  no  one 
could  be  more  qualified  for  the  undertaking, — particulars  concerning 
which  may  be  also  read  in  Brugsch,199  who  visited  Metraheni  while 
the  works  and  surveys  were  going  on.  The  royal  names  dis-interred 
are  given  by  him ;  and  they  belong  to  the  XlXth-XXth  dynasties, 
or  the  15th-12th  century  b.  c.  ;  but  the  depth,  beneath  the  surface,  at 
which  they  were  found,  indicates  a  much  more  remote  antiquity  for 
the  accumulation  of  soil  below  them.  During  my  recent  sojourn  in 
London,  Mr.  Horner,  among  other  courtesies,  was  pleased  to  show 
rne  the  interesting  specimens  collected,  and  to  favor  me  with  an 
insight  into  the  probable  results.  These  were  to  appear  in  a  later 
number  of  the  Royal  Society's  Transactions.  They  will  establish  an 
unexpected  antiquity  for  the  Nile's  deposits ;  especially  as  Mr.  Hor- 
ner, with  Lepsius  and  all  of  us,  takes  the  Xllth  Dynasty  at  about 
2300  before  Christ;  which,  as  he  correctly  observes,  "according  to 
the  marginal  chronology  printed  in  the  latest  editions  of  our  Bibles, 
is  about  300  years  before  the  death  of  Noah."2"0 

Again,  to  the  ante-Abrahamic  age  of  the  same  XHth  dynasty, 
more  than  4000  years  backwards  from  our  own  day,  belong  those 
eighteen  hieroglyphical  inscriptions,  recording,  upon  the  rocks  near 
Samneh,  for  a  period  of  about  fifty  years,  "  the  height  to  which  the 
river  rose  in  the  several  years  of  which  they  bear  the  date.  Inde- 
pendently of  the  novelty  of  these  inscriptions,  which  are  very  short, 
they  possess  great  value  in  enabling  us  to  compare  the  ancient  ele- 
vations of  the  waters  of  the  Nile  with  those  of  our  time ;  for  the  oldest 
of  these  records  dates  back  to  a  period  of  2200  years  before  the 
Christian  era.  Thus,  the  measurements  I  have  made  with  the  great- 
est care,  and  which  at  this  place  were  taken  with  comparative  facility, 
have  given  the  remarkable  result,  that  the  average  rise  of  the  Nile, 

196  Otia  JEgyptiaca,  1849,  pp.  67-8. 

M'  Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  exlv,  Part  I,  London,  4to,  1855; 
pp.  105-38. 

198  Letters  from  Egypt,  &c. — revised  by  the  author ;  and  translated  by  Leonora  and 
Joanna  B.  Horner;  London,  12mo,  1853. 

199  Reiseberichle  aus  jEgypten  (1853-4),  Leipzig,  8vo,  1855;  pp.  62-79. 

200  "Mr.  Horner  on  the  Alluvial  Land  of  Egypt,"  op.  cit.,  p.  123. 


468  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

4000  years  ago,  was  7  metres,  30  cent,  (or  about  24  English  feet) 
higher  than  it  is  at  the  present  day."  *  *  *  "It  explains  a  fact  that 
had  previously  surprised  me,  viz :  that  in  all  the  valley  of  Nubia,  the 
level  of  the  soil  upon  both  shores,  although  it  consists  entirely  of 
alluvium  deposited  by  the  Nile,  is  much  more  elevated  than  at  the 
highest  level  of  the  river  in  the  best  year  of  modern  inundation."201 

I  have  a  distinct  recollection  of  localities  in  Lower  Nubia,  —  ex- 
plored with  Mr.  A.  C.  Harris  during  our  shooting  excursions  as  far 
as  "Wadee  Haifa  (2d  cataract),  in  1839^40 —  where  the  alluvium, 
deposited  by  the  Nile  anciently,  upon  the  rock,  was  at  great  distance 
from,  and  at  a  higher  level  than,  inundations  at  this  day :  hut  the 
phenomenon  merely  excited  surprise ;  nor,  until  Chev.  Lepsius  dis- 
covered the  inscriptions  at  Samneh,  was  an  unaccountable  circum- 
stance, now  of  great  value  in  geology  as  well  as  chronology,  either 
important  or  explicable.  Eighteen  years  later,  it  helps  to  mark 
degrees  of  time  on  Nature's  calendar;  and,  conjointly  with  the  hiero- 
glyphs of  Manetho's  Xllth  dynasty,  cut  at  Samneh,  to  fix  a  date  for 
the  ante-Noachian  existence  of  civilized  humanity  upon  earth. 

Adjacent  to  these  inscriptions  stand  the  coetaneous  fortifications 
of  Samneh,  built  with  great  military  skill  and  on  an  immense  scale, 
by  these  Pharaohs  of  the  Xllth  dynasty,  as  their  frontier  bulwark 
of  the  south  against  the  attacks  of  Nubian  hordes.  M.  de  Vogue,  a 
competent  judge,  has  re-explored  the  localities  ;202  confirming  in  every 
respect  the  anterior  discovery  of  Chev.  Lepsius. 

Geological  investigation  of  Egypt,  therefore,  begins  to  furnish 
abundant  elbow-room  for  Plato's  long  disregarded  assertion,  put 
into  the  Greek  month  of  a  native  Egyptian  priest  too !  —  "And  the 
annals  even  of  our  own  city  [Sais]  have  been  preserved  8000  years 
in  our  sacred  writing.  I  will  briefly  describe  the  laws  and  most 
illustrious  actions  of  those  States  which  have  existed  9000  years."203 
—  "And  you  will,  by  observing,  discover,  that  what  have  been 
painted  and  sculptured  there  [in  Egypt]  10,000  years  ago,  —  and  I 
say  10,000  years,  not  as  a  word,  but  a  fact,  —  are  neither  more  beau- 

»'  Lepsius,  letter  to  Dr.  S.  G.  Morton,  "Philse,  Sept.  15,  1844;"  Proceedings  of  the 
Academy  of  Natural  Sciences  of  Philadelphia,  Jan.  21,  1845:  —  See  references  to  Lepsius's 
later  works,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  692 ;  and,  for  faithful  copies  of  the  inscriptions  them- 
selves, the  Prussian  Denkmiiler,  Abth.  iv.,  Bd,  2,  Bl.  137,  139,  151. 

202  "  Les  fortifications  antiques  a  Samneh  (Nubie)  " — Bulletin  Archeologique  de  VAthenceum 
Francai.i,  Paris,  Sept.,  1855;  pp.  81-4,  PI.  v.  Mr.  Osburn's  romantic  inference,  about  the 
connection  between  these  works  and  Joseph's  seven  years  of  famine,  merely  proves  that 
this  learned,  if  volcanic,  Coptologist  is  no  geologist  (Monumental  History  of  Egypt,  London, 
8vo.,  1854;  ii.  pp.  35,  132-9. 

203  "The  Timseus,"  Plato's  works,  Davis  transl.  (Bohn)  London,  1849,  vi.,  p.  327. 


THE     POL  YGENIST  S.  469 

tiful,  nor  more  ugly,  than  those  turned  out  of  hand  at  the  present 
day,  but  are  worked  off  according  to  the  same  art."204 

In  his  romance  of  Atlantis,  Plato  makes  the  Egyptian  priest  say 
to  Solon,  that  the  Athenian  commonwealth  had  been  created  first  by 
Minerva,  and  "  one  thousand  years  later  she  founded  ours ;  and  this 
government  established  amongst  us  dates,  according  to  our  sacred 
books,  from  eight  thousand  years."  Referring  to  Henri  Martin205  for 
annihilation  of  this  Platonic  myth  as  an  historical  document,  the  pas- 
sage merely  serves  to  display  Plato's  conception  of  the  world's  anti- 
quity. Farcy2"6  follows  him  up  with  a  ruinous  critique  of  "Atlan- 
tis "  as  applicable  to  its  ridiculous  attribution  to  the  population  of 
America.  Humboldt,207  more  good-natured,  while  treating  Atlantis 
as  mythic,  seems  inclined  to  hope  the  story  may  be  true.  Still,  in 
no  case,  do  Plato's  theories  help  us  to  a  sound  chronology. 

His  1 0,000  years  for  man  in  Egypt  are  but  the  half  of  the  "  20,000  " 
now  required,  — 23  centuries  after  Plato,  by  Bunsen,  for  the  exist- 
ence of  mankind  upon  our  planet's  superficies ;  and  thus,  as  I  have 
long  sustained,206  we  have  finally  got  beyond  all  biblical  or  any  other 
chronology.  Indeed,  the  most  rigorous  curtailer  of  Egyptian  annals, 
my  erudite  friend  Mr.  Samuel  Sharpe,  states  the  case  (except  that 
his  date  for  Osirtesen  seems  too  contracted)  exactly  as  all  hierolo- 
gists  of  the  present  day  understand  Egypt's  position  in  the  world's 
history : 

"  For  how  many  years,  or  rather  thousands  of  years,  this  globe  had 
already  been  the  dwelling-place  of  man,  and  the  arts  of  life  had  been 
growing  under  his  inventive  industry,  is  uncertain ;  we  can  hope  to 
know  very  little  of  our  race  and  its  other  discoveries  before  the  in- 
vention of  letters.  But  in  the  reign  of  Osirtesen  the  carved  writing, 
by  means  of  figures  of  men,  animals,  plants,  and  other  natural  and 
artificial  objects,  was  far  from  new.  We  are  left  to  imagine  the 
number  of  centuries  [anterior  to  the  Pyramids']  that  must  have  passed 

204  "The  Laws,"  Burges  transl.,  op.  cti.,  1852,  v.  p.  50. 

205  ]£tudes  sur  le  Time'e  de  Plalon,  Paris,  1841,  "Atlantide:" —  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  594, 
718,  728. 

206  Antiguite's  Mexicaines,  before  cited,  ii.  pp.  41-55. 

207  "Le  recit  de  Platon  offrirait  moins  de  difficulty  chi-onologique,  1'intervalle  de  210  ans 
entre  la  vieillesse  de  Solon  et  celle  de  Platon  e'tant  rempli  par  trois  generations  de  la  descend- 
ance de  Dropide"s,  si,  par  une  alteration  sans  doute  blamable  du  texte,  c'etait  celui-ci  etnon 
Solon  qui  racontait  a  Critias,  le  grand-pere  de  Pinterlocuteur,  ce  qu'il  avait  appris,  par 
Solon,  de  la  catastrophe  de  1' Atlantide.  *  *  *  Platon,  pour  donner  plus  d'importance  a  son 
recit,  aurait  pu  introduire  tous  ces  faits  dans  un  roman  historique,  et  sa  parents  avcc 
Solon  favorisait  la  probability  de  la  fiction."  (Examen  Critique  de  Vhistoire  de  la  Geographic, 
&c,  before  quoted,  "Considerations,"  i.  pp.  167-73.) 

a»  Otia  JEgpliaea,  pp.  41-2 ;  61-8 :  and  Types  of  Mankind,  683-9. 


470  THE    MONOGESTISTS    AND 

since  this  mode  of  writing  first  came  into  use,  when  the  characters 
were  used  for  the  objects  only."209 

Mr.  Birch,  living  dispassionately  in  the  midst  of  temptations,  aug- 
mented hourly  by  the  increasing  copiousness  of  his  materials,  adheres, 
with  admirable  fortitude,  to  the  non-recognition  of  any  arithmetical 
system  of  chronology.  His  last  and  invaluable  pr&cis  of  Egyptian 
hieroglyphs210  contains  no  allusion  to  this  "  vexata  qusestio  ;"  but  we 
may  look  forward  to  a  history  of  Egypt,  reconstructed  by  himself 
exclusively  from  archselogical  monuments,  that,  according  to  my 
view,  will  ground  Xilotic  history  upon  a  more  stable  basis  than  ever- 
fluctuating  ciphers.  In  the  meanwhile,  a  thorough  revision  of  the 
astronomical  data  contained  in  hieroglyphical  inscriptions,  —  data 
that,  utterly  misconstrued  in  object  as  well  as  import,  for  the  last  half- 
century,  have  provoked  endless  disputations — has  at  length  enabled 
M.  Biot211  to  fix  three  lifetimes  of  Pharaohs  by  three  several  instances 
wherein  "the  festival  of  Sothis  (Syrius,  the  dog-star),"  is  recorded 
on  monuments  of  the  XVHth  and  XXth  dynasties.  The  first 
occurred  about  B.  c.  1440,  during  the  reign  of  Thotmes  III;  the  second 
about  b.  c.  1300,  under  Ramses  HI;  and  the  third  under  Ramses  VH, 
about  b.  c.  1240. 

Precious  to  science  as  are  these  new  facts,  I  doubt  whether  the 
destruction  of  false  hypotheses  is  not  more  so ;  and  the  removal  of 
further  hallucinations  about  pharaonic  observation  of  the  "  Sothic 
Period"  is  one  of  countless  reasons  for  gratitude  to  Biot.212  After 
reading  his  criticism  of  Grseco-Roman  postulates,  one  recognizes  how 
"It  becomes  easy  to  see  that  the  idea  of  an  heliacal  Thoth,  as  if  it 
had  been  really  observed  at  Memphis,  under  conditions  that  would 
make  it  correspond,  day  by  day,  with  that  of  Antoninus,  after  the 
revolution  of  1461  vague  years,  is  a  pure  fiction  :"  at  the  same  time 
that,  to  imagine  Menophres,  which  is  but  a  Greek  translation  of  the 
nome  (province)  of  Memphis,  to  have  been  a  King,  becomes,  likewise, 
"a  chimera."  ! 

More  popular,  though  not  less  interesting,  is  the  beautiful  "  Deter- 
mination of  the  Vernal  Equinox  of  1852,  effected  in  Egypt,  according 
to  observations  of  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun  in  the  alignement 
of  the  southern  and  northern  faces  of  the  great  Pyramid  of  Memphis, 

a»  History  of  Egypt,  London,  2d  ed.,  1852 ;  i.  p.  13. 

210  Crystal  Palace  Library,  London,  12mo,  Bradbury  and  Evana,  1856.  Possessing  only 
the  proof-sheets,  kindly  given  to  me  by  my  friend  Mr.  Birch,  in  advance  of  publication,  I 
cannot  supply  its  definitive  title. 

211  Memoires  de  V Academic  des  Sciences,  Tome  XXIV,  1853. 

212  Recherches  de  quelgues  Dales  Absolues  qui  peuvent  se  conclure  des  dates  vagues  sur  les 
Monumens  Egyptians,  Paris,  4to,  1853;  pp.  16-17. 


THE    POLTGENISTS.  471 

by  M.  Mariette."2'3  It  explains  how  naturally  this  vaunted  "wisdom 
of  the  Egyptians"  (Acts  vii,  22)  reduces  itself  to  simple  "rules  of 
thumb,"  still  practised  daily  by  the  unlettered  Fellaheen  along  the 
Nile;  and  proves  also  "que  les  prejuges  du  savoir  une  fois  etablis 
sont  durs  a  detruire.     C'est  une  sorte  d'ignorance  petrifiee." 

This  aphorism  of  M.  Biot  applies  with  singular  force  to  chronolo- 
gers  of  the  old  school,  among  whom,  however,  must  not  be  ranked 
Prof.  Orcurti,214  one  of  the  Egyptologists  attached  to  the  Museum  of 
Turin,  where  the  liberal  principles  of  Sardinia  allow  free  utterance 
to  opinion.  He  likewise  advocates  tbe  longest  chronology: — "Hence 
[the  ChampollionistsJ  establish  that  Egyptian  chronology  must  be 
studied  at  its  direct  fountains,  independently  of  the  chronological 
data  of  the  Bible  (I  mean  for  the  epoch  anterior  to  the  XVHIth 
dynasty);  inasmuch  as,  there  not  being  a  fixed  and  established  chro- 
nology of  Hebrew  annals,  reason  insists  that  we  should  avail  our- 
selves of  that  liberty  which  the  [Catholic]  Church  concedes  to  us  for 
using  anysoever  chronological  system."  *  *  *  "Beyond  this  period 
[the  XHth  dynasty  which,  with  De  Rouge,  he  fixes  about  2900  b.  c], 
we  do  not  care  to  prosecute  the  tedious  task  of  adding  ciphers  that 
are  only  conjectural ;"  and,  like  myself,215  Orcurti  rejects  the  con- 
temporaneousness of  any  Egyptian  dynasties ;  holding  that, — "all  the 
ingenuity  of  Bunsen  availed  naught  in  causing  a  system  to  be 
accepted  which  is  in  contradiction  with  the  historians  and  the  monu- 
ments." 

It  is  partly  for  this  reason,  and  partly  for  another  to  be  given  anon, 
that  I  will  not  weary  readers  with  an  analysis  of  the  2d  vol.  (1853) 
of  Chev.  Bunsen's  anglicised  "  Egypt's  Place  in  the  World's  History," 
in  which  the  author's  enormous  erudition  rivals  his  wonderful  dex- 
terity in  making  his  own  ciphers  harmonize  with  each  other  rather 
than  with  the  monuments.  Neither  is  it  worth  the  labor  to  point 
out  the  whimsicalities  of  the  "Monumental  History  of  Egypt"  (1854), 
by  Mr.  Osburn  a  scholar  that,  apart  from  his  unquestionable  skill 
in  deciphering  inscriptions,  coupled  with  a  good  knowledge  of  Copt- 
ology,  seems  to  hanker  after  the  character  of  Homer's  Margites, 
who  knew  a  great  many  things,  but  all  of  them  wrong.™ 

213  Biot,  Journal  des  Savants,  May,  June,  July,  1855;  p.  29,  &c:  and  Idem.  "Surles 
restes  de  l'Aneienne  Uranographie  dgyptienne  que  l'on  pourrait  reHrouver  aujourd'hui  chez 
les  Arabes  qui  habitent  l'int€rieur  de  l'Egypte" —  op.  cit.  Aug.  1855.  See  especially  Dk 
Roug£,  "  Noms  6gyptiens  des  Planetes," — Bui.  Archeol.,  Athen  Francois,  Mara-Avril,  1856. 

214  Calalogo  illustrato  dei  Monumenti  Egizii  del  R.  Museo  di  Torino,  Turin,  8vo,  1852  ;  pp. 
47,  51,  57. 

a5  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  677,  683. 

216  Bentlet's  Phalaris,  Dyce's  ed.,  London,  8vo,  1836;  II,  p.  11;  from  Alcib.  II  of  Plato, 
Op.  Ill,  116,  ed.  1826. 


472  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

Even  for  the  only  true  synchronism,  yet  proved,  between  Egyptian 
monuments  and  Hebrew  records,  viz :  the  conquest  of  Jerusalem  by 
Shishak;217  a  latitude  of  some  15  years  must  be  allowed,  as  shown 
by  the  following  table.218 


Ch  ampollio  n-Figea  c, 

Letronne, 

Lenormanty 

Wilkinson, 

Bunsen, 

De  Rouge, 

Banicchi, 

B.  C.  971. 

980. 

981. 

978. 

982. 

973. 

989. 

There  being  absolutely  nothing,  heretofore  discovered,  in  the  hiero- 
glyphics, relative  to  any  preceding  relations  between  the  Israelites 
and  the  Egyptians,  we  are  reduced  to  the  vague  process  of  chronolo- 
gical parallels  for  conjecturing  under  what  particular  "Pharaoh" 
(king),  occurred  the  Exodus,  or  Joseph's  ministry,  or  Abraham's 
visit ;  and  inasmuch  as  neither  on  the  Egyptian,  nor  on  the  Jewish 
side,  can  arithmetical  precision219  be  attained  beyond  Solomon's  age, 
or  about  1000  b.  c,  we  may  now,  after  34  years  of  incessant  scrutiny 
since  Champollion's  "Precis,"  give  up  further  illusion  tbat  any  closer 
synchronism  between  Moses  and  the  "Pharaoh"  who  was  not  drowned 
in  the  Red  Sea,22"  than  the  one  very  plausibly  arrived  at  by  Lepsius,221 
and  adopted  by  Viscount  E.  de  Rouge,222  will  ever  be  wrought  out. 

After  showing  the  probability  that  Moses  must  have  succeeded 
the  reign  of  a  Ramses  (Exod,  I, 11 — "Raamses  "),  and  that  the  Exode 
probably  took  place  while  Menephthah,  son  of  Ramses  II,  was  on 
the  throne,  De  Rouge  now  confirms  an  assertion  made  by  me,  ever 
since  I  acquired  some  knowledge  of  hieroglyphics  (in  Egypt,  1839- 
41), —  and  advanced  in  the  face  of  then-preponderating  hopes  rather 
than  testimony  to  the  contrary,  that — "we  have  not  found,  upon  the 
monuments,  the  trace  of  these  first  relations  of  the  Israelites  with 
Egypt."  They  never  will  be  found ;  and  this  for  reasons  which  a 
critical  examination  of  the  ages  and  writers  of  the  book  called  "Exo- 
dus" would  conclusively  explain. 

"  Chronology,"  continues  De  Rouge,  "presents  too  many  uncer- 
tainties, as  much  in  Egyptian  history  as  in  the  Bible,  and  especially 
when  an  endeavor  is  made  to  measure  the  period  of  the  Judges,  for 
one  to  be  able,  a  priori  and  through  a  simple  comparison  of  dates, 
to  define  under  what  king  took  place  the  exit  from  Egypt.  The 
difficulty  is   still  greater  when   it   concerns   the  patriarch  Joseph, 

m  Gliddon,  Chapters  on  Early  Egyptian  History,  Archwology,  ire,  1st  ed.,  New  York, 
1843;   15th  ed.,  Philadelphia,  1854;   pp.  2,  3. 

218  Orcurti,  op.  cit.  p.  50. 

219  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  G88,  706,  714. 

220  Wilkinson,  Man.  and  Cast,  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  London,  1837;  I.  pp.  54-5. 

221  Chronologie  der  jEgypter,  Berlin,  4to,  1st  part,  1849;  pp.  358-63. 

222  Consei-vator  of  the  Imperial  Museum  at  the  Louvre  —  Notice  Sommaire  des  Monument 
liyypliens  du  Mus6e  du  Louvre,  Paris,  18mo,  1855;  pp.  14,  15,  22-3. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  473 

because  the  length  of  the  time  of  servitude  in  Egypt  is  itself  the 
object  of  numerous  controversies."  *  *  *  "As  we  have  said,  the 
synchronism  of  Moses  with  Ramses  II  [XlXth  dynasty],  so  precious 
at  the  historical  point  of  view,  gives  us  insufficient  light  for  chrono- 
logy ;  because  the  duration  of  the  time  of  the  Judges  of  Israel  is  not 
known  in  a  very  certain  manner.  We  shall  remain  within  the  limit 
of  the  probable  on  placing  Seti  I  about  1500  [b.  c],  and  the  com- 
mencement of  the  XVIIIth  dynasty  toward  the  18th  century.  But 
it  would  be  by  no  means  astonishing  if  we  deceived  oui'selves  two 
hundred  years  in  the  estimate,  so  greatly  are  the  documents  vitiated 
in  history  or  incomplete  upon  the  monuments. 

"  We  have  thus  mounted  up  to  the  moment  of  the  expulsion  of 
the  Shepherds  \_Hyksos~] :  here  we  shall  not  even  undertake  any 
further  calculation.  The  texts  do  not  accord  as  to  the  time  which 
the  occupation  of  Egypt  by  these  terrible  guests  lasted,  and  the 
monuments  are  silent  in  this  respect.  That  time  was  long ;  several 
dynasties  succeeded  each  other  before  the  deliverance :  this  is  all 
that  we  know  about  it.  We  are  not  better  edified  concerning  the 
length  of  the  first  empire,  and  we  possess  no  reasonable  means  of 
measuring  the  age  of  the  pyramids,  those  witnesses  of  the  grandeur 
of  the  primitive  Egj'ptians.  If  nevertheless  we  recall  to  mind, 
that  the  generations  which  constructed  them  are  separated  from 
our  vulgar  era,  first  by  the  eighteen  centuries  of  the  second 
Egyptian  empire,  next  by  the  very  long  period  of  the  Asiatic  inva- 
sion, and  lastly  by  several  numerous  and  powerful  dyuasties  that 
have  bequeathed  to  us  some  monuments  of  their  passage,  the  hoary 
antiquity  of  the  pyramids,  maugre  inability  to  calculate  it  exactly, 
will  lose  nothing  of  its  majesty  in  the  eyes  of  the  historian." 

From  this  rapid  sketch  of  the  unanimity  of  opinion  as  to  the  his- 
toric and  prehistoric  periods  of  human  life  in  Egypt  (oldest  of  histo- 
rical countries)  towards  which  scientific  men  in  France,  Italy,  Ger- 
many, and  England,  are  now  converging,  the  reader  will  appreciate 
the  correctness  of  the  view  taken  by  me,  and  supported  with  other 
citations,  in  Types  of  Mankind.  It  merely  shows  how  different  minds, 
reasoning  without  prejudice  upon  the  same  common  stock  of  data, 
necessarily  arrive  at  similar  conclusions.  But  M.  de  Rouge's  refe- 
rence to  the  difficulties  of  adjusting  the  chronology  of  the  Book  of 
Judjes  induces  a  glance  at  its  new  and  likely  solution  proposed  by 
Mr.  Samuel  Sharpe.223 

The  obstacles  to  previous  settlement  of  the  succession  of  Israel's 

223  Historic  notes  on  the  Books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  (supra,  note  29)  pp.  40-6. 


474  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Judges  are  familiar  to  possessors  of  Cahen,224  De  Wette,235  Munk,228 
Righellini,227  or  Palfrey.223    Hitherto,  as  Basnage 229  remarks,  owing 
to  superstitions  of  modern  European  origin  upon  the  exaggerated 
antiquity  of  their  literature,  the  Jews  "  have  been  the  librarians  of 
God,  and  ours  too  :"  nor  are  they  only  bigoted  Talmudists  who  still 
maintain,  "  that  he  who  sins  against  Moses  may  be  forgiven,  but  he 
that  contradicts  the  Doctors  deserves  death."     There  are  plenty  of 
teachers  extant  who,  without  the  faith  or  the  Hebraism  of  old  Solo- 
mon Jarchi  (Raschi),   would  with  him   declare,  that — "if  a  Rabbi 
should  teach  that  the  left  hand  is  the  right,  and  the  right  the  left,  we 
are  bound  to  believe  him."230    But,  for  the  purpose  in  hand,  which 
is  to   show  how  Mr.   Sharpe  re-arranges   the   discrepant  Book  of 
Judges,  it  suffices  to  repeat  the  exhortation  of  St.  Jerome, — "Relege 
omnes  et  Veteris  et  Ebvi  Testam-enti  libros,  et  tantam  annorum 
reperies  dissonantiam  et  numerum  inter  Juclam  et  Israel,  id  est,  inter 
regnum  utr unique  confusum,  ut  hujusce-modi  hasrere  quaestionibus, 
non  tarn  studiosi,  quam  otiosi  hominis  esse  videatur:"231  not  forgets 
ting  either,  how  the  father  of  Catholic  biblical  criticism,  P£re  Simon 
de  l'Oratoire,  eschews — ■"  the  punctilios  of  chrouologists ;  that  contain 
more  vowels  than  consonants,  and  which  it  would  be  more  incom- 
modious to  harmonize  than  the  different  clocks  of  a  large  city.  *  * 
Impossible  to   make   an  exact  chronology  through  the  Books   of 
Sacred  Scripture  such  as  they  are  at  this  day." 

"Albeit,"  writes  Munk,232  "it  is  impossible  to  present  an  historical 
tableau  of  the  epoch  of  the  Shophetim.  The  Book  of  Judges,  which 
is  the  only  one  we  can  consult  about  that  epoch,  is  not  a  book  of  his- 
tory. Every  thing  in  it  is  recounted  in  an  unstitched  manner,  and 
the  events  succeed  each  other  with  rigorous  sequence  and  without 
chronological  order.  It  is  a  collection  of  detached  traditions  about 
the  times  of  the  Shophetim,  composed  probably  upon  ancient  poems 
and  upon  popular  legends  that  celebrated  the  glory  of  these  heroes. 
This  collection,  which  dates  from  the  first  ages  of  the  monarchy,  had 
for  object,  as  it  appears,  to  encourage  the  new  government  to  com- 

wi  La  Bible,  Traduction  Nouvelle,  "Schophetim,"  vol.  vii. ;  Paris,  1846. 
225  Crit.  and  Hist.  Introduction  to  the  Canon.  Scrip,  of  the  Old  Testament,  Boston,  transl. 
Parker,  1843;  ii.  pp.  196-8. 

™  Palestine,  Paris,  1845;  pp.  230-1,  441. 

22'  Examen  de  la  Religion  Chre'tienne  el  de  la  Religion  Juive.  Paris,  8to.,  1834;  iii.  p.  560. 

228  Academical  Lectures  on  the  Jewish  Scriptures,  Boston,  8vo.,  1840;  ii.  pp.  208-35. 

229  History  and  Religion  of  the  Jews,  transl.  Taylor,  London,  fol.  1708;  pp.  344,  170. 

230  Mackat,  Progress  of  the  Intellect,  London,  8vo.,  1850;   p.  14. 

231  Episl.  ad  Vital.  —  Kichakd  Simon,  Hisloire  Critique  du  Vieux  Testament,  Amsterdam, 
4to.,  1685;  i.  pp.  38,  350,  204-8. 

232  Palestine,  p.  231. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  475 

plete  the  work  begun  by  Joshua,  and  to  show  to  the  people  all  the 
advantages  of  hereditary  royalty.  For  this  purpose,  it  sufficed  to 
show,  by  a  series  of  examples,  what  had  been  the  disorders  to  which 
the  Hebrews  delivered  themselves  up,  during  the  clays  of  the  repub- 
lic ;  what  had  been  the  evil  consequences  which  the  (loving)  weak- 
ness of  the  Hebrews  towards  the  Canaanites  had  caused,  and  how 
the  temporary  power  of  one  alone  had  always  preserved  them  from 
total  ruin.  One  must  not,  therefore,  think  to  establish  with  exact- 
ness the  chronological  order  of  facts  and  the  epoch  of  each  judge. 
Savants  have  given  themselves,  in  this  respect,  useless  trouble,  and 
all  their  efforts  have  completely  failed.  It  will  suffice  to  say  that  the 
ciphers  which  we  find  in  the  Book  of  Judges,  and  in  the  first  book 
of  Samuel,  yield  us,  from  the  death  of  Joshua  to  the  commencement 
of  the  reign  of  Saiil,  the  sum  total  of  500  years ;  which  would  make, 
since  the  exode  from  Egypt,  565  years ;  whereas,  the  first  book  of 
Kings  counts  but  480  years  from  the  going  out  of  Egypt  down  to  the 
foundation  of  the  Temple  under  Solomon.  According  to  this,  one 
must  suppose  [with  Mr.  Sharpe]  that  several  of  the  Shophetim 
governed  simultaneously  in  different  countries.  In  the  incertitude 
of  the  dates,  and  in  the  absence  of  historical  sources,  we  must  con- 
tent ourselves  by  here  giving  a  summary  of  the  traditions  contained 
in  the  Book  of  Judges,  to  afford  a  general  tableau  of  the  state  of  the 
Hebrews  during  that  period,  without  pretending  to  establish  a  chro- 
nological succession." 

The  great  merit  of  Mr.  Sharpe's  restoration  to  accordance  of  the 
dislocated  fragments  contained  in  Judges  is  its  simplicity ;  and  sim- 
plicity, so  far  from  being  an  index  to  a  primeval  stage  of  human 
intellect,  is  always  an  expression  of  modern  philosophical  science. 

"  To  determine  the  chronology,  we  must  have  regard  to  the  geo- 
graphy; and  we  shall  see  that  the  wars  here  mentioned  do  not 
always  belong  to  the  whole  of  the  Israelites ;"  that  is,  they  often 
occurred  simultaneously,  and  not,  as  generally  supposed  by  the  old 
chronologers,  consecutively — different  points  of  Palestine  being 
ruled  over  by  different  judges  at  the  same  time.  "  The  whole  argu- 
ment will  be  made  more  clear  by  the  following  Chronological  Table : 


476 


THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 


S 

O 
H 

t— I 
P 

P3 
O 

o 
«i 

a 
m 

a 

> 
p 
ix 

C5 
H 
85 
P 
O 

o 


CS 


■SP5 

3 


a. 


E     - 
o  ^3 


-rP 


f^P 


CD  0 


PC 


P 


o5    I 

c3    ; 

>»  : 

o    : 

■^    : 

-  J3 

zn     • 

*    fl> 

cd   : 

:- 

O 


=1 

"a 

-5 


o 


THE     POL  YGENI  ST  S.  477 

Mr.  Sharpe  hence  infers,  that  "  the  Book  of  Judges  ends  in  the 
year  b.  c.  1100,  and  begins  with  Joshua's  death,  about  b.  c.  1250 ;  and 
the  Exodus  took  place  about  b.  c.  1300.  In  this  way,  from  the  Exodus 
to  the  building  of  the  Temple,  in  the  fourth  year  of  Solomon's  reign, 
is  289  years.  If,  instead  of  considering  the  periods  of  time  in  part 
contemporaneous,  we  had  added  them  all  together  [as  did  the 
unknown  writers  of  Kings'],  we  should  have  had  about  the  480  years 
mentioned  in  1  Kings  vi,  1.  But  the  above  calculation  is  fully 
confirmed  by  the  genealogies,"  &c. 

In  the  topographical  and  coetaneous  tabulation  of  these  judges, 
few  students  will  disagree  with  the  learned  author ;  but,  in  a  later 
portion  of  his  valuable  work,  Mr.  Sharpe  himself  indicates  the 
vagueness  inherent  in  all  these  Jewish  attempts  at  restoring  their 
lost  chronology:233  "The  events,  indeed,  in  the  history,  from  the 
Exodus  to  Solomon's  death,  can  hardly  occupy  more  than  three 
centuries,  if  we  observe  that  the  times  mentioned  are  mostly  in 
round  numbers  of  forty  years  each,  which  we  are  at  liberty  to  consider 
indefinite,  and  only  to  mean  several  years." 

Thus,  if,  on  the  one  hand,  new  evidences  from  the  monuments 
and  the  alluvial  deposits  of  the  Nile  constrain  Egyptologists  to 
claim,  for  man's  occupation  of  that  valley,  epochas  so  far  beyond  all 
historic  chronology  (and  no  other  deserves  the  name),  as  to  eliminate 
the  subject,  henceforward,  from  any  computation  of  the  contradic- 
tory elements  contained  in  Hebrew,  Samaritan,  Greek,  or  Latin, 
biblical  codices :  on  the  other,  the  parallel  advance  in  Scriptural 
exegesis  has  curtailed  to  rational  limits  the  preposterous  antiquity 
formerly  claimed  for  the  Israelitish  nation. 

Whether  Usher  (in  the  margin  of  king  James's  version)  takes, 
with  Marsan,  480  years  as  the  interval  between  the  exode  and 
Solomon's  temple ;  or  Bossuet,  488  ;  or  Buret  de  Longchamps,  495 ; 
or  Pezron,  837;  has  now  become  a  matter  of  no  consecmence. 
"  Three  centuries,"  a  little  more  or  less,  is  the  average  between  Mr. 
Sharpe's  estimate  and  that  of  Lepsius,  at  about  314-322  years.234  To 
reach  nearer  than  that  supputation  is  a  hopeless  task,  upon  existing 
MSS.  of  the  Old  Testament, —  each  one  being  faulty. 

Since  it  has  been  discovered  that,  before  Rabbi  Hillel,  son  of  Juda, 
the  Jews  had  made  no  scientific  attempts  (whatever  the  Alexandrian 
Greeks  may  have  done)  to  establish  a  "chronology"  for  their  own 
nation,  no  further  dependence  can  be  placed  upon  Hebrew  numera- 
tion.    Hillel  died  about  310-12 ;  and  in  such  repute  was  his  autho- 

233  Historic  Notes,  p.  82.  Lepsius's  argument  to  the  same  effect  is  cited  in  Types  of  Man- 
hind,  pp.  706-12. 

*"  Ckronologie  der  jfigypter,  I,  335-7. 


478  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

rity  held,  that  St.  Epiphanius  claims  his  previous  conversion 235  from 
Judaism!  Hillel,  continues  Basnage,  did  three  things  which  ren- 
dered him  famous  among  Jews  and  Christians.  One  of  them  was : 
"It  was  that  he  fixed  the  epocha  from  the  Creation  of  the  World,  and 
reckoned  the  years  from  them.  Different  epochas  were  made  use  of 
before.  The  departure  from  Egypt  was  the  sera  of  some ;  the  Law 
given  at  Sinai  was  that  of  others :  one  reckoned  the  years  from  the 
Dedication  of  the  Temple  ;  another  from  the  return  out  of  captivity: 
some  dated  from  Alexander  the  Great's  entering  into  Jerusalem, 
which  they  looked  upon  as  a  considerable  event  to  the  Republick. 
But  since  the  Gremara  was  finished,  they  began  to  reckon  the  years 
from  the  Creation  of  the  world ;  and  we  are  told  that  it  was  Hillel 
who  established  this  epocha,  and  transmitted  it  to  posterity  (for  it  is 
still  observed);  and,  according  to  his  calculation,  Jesus  Christ  was 
born  in  the  year  3760."  *  *  *  The  Jews  sustained,  however,  that 
"Jesus  Christ  is  not  the  Messiah,  since  he  came  above  200  years 
before  the  end  of  the  fourth  millennium :"  *  *  *  on  which  Basnage 
comments  that  "Jesus  Christ  ought  to  be  lorn  in  the  year  3910" ! 

"Varise  opiniones  de  numero  annorum  a  creatione  ad  nativitatem 
Christi :  et  quid  de  fine  mundi  sentiendam," — is  a  statement  illustrated 
by  Gaffarelli336  with  a  list  of  more  than  twenty  authorities,  from 
Paulus  Forosemproniensis  down  to  Malvenda,  in  which  the  dates  for 
the  Creation  range  from  b.  c.  3760  to  6310  !  "  Ex  quibus  concluditur, 
nee  dies  neque  annos  a  creatione  ad  Christum  absque  peculiar!  reve- 
latione  sciri  posse."  To  the  above,  his  translator  obligingly  adds 
five  more  estimates  of  the  year  of  the  Nativity, — between  a.  m.  3837 
and  a.  m.  3970 :  marvelling,  with  Clemens  Alexandrinus  (lib.  I, 
Strom.  B),  at  the  existence  of  persons,  in  his  time,  who  (not  per- 
ceiving exactly,  with  our  acuter  national  Didymus,  how  chronology 
"binds  man  to  God")  attempt  precision  in  determining  Jesus's 
birth — "Sunt  qui  curiosius  non  solum  annum  sed  diem  addunt!" 
And  this  erudite  father  of  the  Church  was  living  (a.  d.  192-217) 
barely  two  centuries  after  the  occurrence  of  this  the  greatest  (among 
ourselves)  event  of  events. 

Mosheim237  honestly  concedes  that  the  year  of  Christ  "has  not 
been  hitherto  fixed  with  certainty;"  but  adopts,  as  "most  probable," 
"the  year  of  Rome  748  or  749  (Matt,  iii,  2;  John  i,  22;  &c.):"  in- 

385  Basnage  (supra,  note  229),  pp.  157-9: — conf.  also  Maokat,  Progress  of  the  Intellect, 
II,  pp.  307-15. 

236  Curiositatce  lnauditos  de  figuris  Persarum  Talismanias,  Horoscopo  Patriarcharum  et 
Characleribus  Ccelestibus;  Latine-opera,  M.  Gregorii  Michaelis;  Hamburgi,  1676;  cap.  II, 
pp.  7,  44-8,  180-2.  337-40. 

235  Ecclesiastical  History,  transl.  Maclaire;  1st  American  ed.,  Philadelphia,  1797;  I,  p.  52. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  479 

forming  us,  in  a  note,  that  "the  learned  John  Albert  Fabricius  has 
collected  all  the  opinions  of  the  learned  concerning  the  year  of 
Christ's  birth."  To  his  work  I  turn:238  although  the  question  be 
not  even  settled  at  this  day ! m 

Under  the  head  of  "Minutiae  in  chronologicis  minus  consectandse," 
Fabricius  enlarges  upon  the  uncertainties  of  chronology;  backing 
assertion  with  citations  of  141  different  epochs  assigned  to  Christ's 
nativity  by  about  283  authorities,  who  begin  at  A.  M.  3616  and  end  at 
a.  m.  6484,  for  this  all-important  event.  Then,  for  those  who 
"Christum  natum  consent"  in  An.  Urbis  cond.  (the  year  of  the 
building  of  Rome),  they  range  between  720  and  756  a.  u.  c.  If, 
more  particular,  we  ask — "Quo  mense  natus  Christus?"  a  table  is 
presented  to  our  sight  in  which  different  computators  have  agreed 
upon  the  6th  January,  or  the  10th  idem,  or  February,  or  March,  or 
the  19-20th  April,  or  the  20th  May,  or  June  "XI  Kal.  Julias,"  or 
July,  or  August  "sub  finem  mensis,"  or  September  "die  XVSeptem- 
bris,  Jo.  Lightfootus  ad  Lucee  II,  7,"  or  October  "sub  init.,"  or  the 
6th  November,  or  the  18th  of  the  same,  or,  lastly,  the  25th  December 
— "ex  communi  Graecse  et  Latinse  Ecclesise  traditione." 

Fabricius  adds  this  singular  coincidence  —  "  Pulchre  observarunt 
Yiri  docti  a  Romanis  die  VIII  Cal.  Januarii  sive  XXV  Decembris 
celebratum  diem  natalem  Solis  invicti,  initium  nempe  periodi  annuae 
et  brumam:  eamque  solennitatem  a  Christianis  opportune  trans- 
latam  ad  Natalem  Solis  Justitise." 

RaoubRochette,240  in  his  erudite  inquiries  into  the  Phoenician  god 
Melkarth,  as  an  incarnation  of  the  Sun  at  the  Winter  Solstice  —  a 
subject  greatly  developed  by  Lanci241 —  has  carried  these  Roman 
analogies  back  to  a  much  earlier  period  in  Canaan.  He  says — "We 
know,  through  a  precise  testimony  in  the  ancient  annals  of  Tyre, 
the  principal  festivity  of  Melkarth,  at  Tyre,  was  called  his  re-birth  or 
his  awakening,  tyepSis  (Joseph.,  Antiq.  Jud.,  VIII,  5,  3) ;  and  that  it 
was  celebrated  by  means  of  a  pyre,  whereupon  the  god  was  supposed 
to  regain,  through  the  aid  of  fire,  a  new  life  (N"onnus,  Dionysiaca,  XL, 

236  Bibliographia  Antiquaria,  sive  Introductio  in  notitiam  Scriptorum,  qui  antiquates  Mebraicas, 
Grcecas,  Eomanas,  et  Christianas  scriptis  illustraverunt ;  2d  ed.,  Hamburgh,  4to,  1716;  pp. 
185-7,  193-8,  842-3,  344. 

239  See  De  Saulct,  "  Sur  la  date  de  la  naissance  et  de  la  mort  du  Christ," — controverted 
by  Alfred  Maury,  "Sur  la  date  de  la  naissance  du  Christ"  (Athenmum  Francais,  1855,  pp. 
485-6,  513-4). 

240  Me'moires  <f  Archeologie  comparee,  Asiatique,  Grecque  el  Etrusque.  Ire  M£m.,  "L'Her- 
cule  Assyrien  et  Phoenicien  consider^  dans  ses  rapports  avec  l'Hercule  Grec;"  Paris,  4to, 
1848 ;  pp.  25-7,  28,  29-38. 

241  Paralipomeni  alV  Illustrazione  delta  Sagra  Scrittura  per  Monumenli  Fenico-Assirii  ad 
Egiziani ;  Paris,  1 845,  4to   2  vols,  passim. 


480  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

398).  The  celebration  of  this  festival,  of  which  the  institution 
mounted  up  to  the  reign  of  king  Hiram,  contemporary  of  Solomon, 
took  place  at  the  month  Peritius;  of  which  the  second  day  corre- 
sponded to  the  25th  December  of  the  Roman  calendar  (Sebv.  ad  JEn. 
VII,  720  —  Jablonsky  and  Zoega)  ;  and,  through  a  coincidence  that 
cannot  be  fortuitous,  this  same  day,  viz :  the  25th  December,  was 
likewise  at  Rome  the  dies  natalis  Solis  invicti  ;  a  qualification  under 
which  Hercules  was  worshipped  at  Tyre  and  elsewhere.  It  was, 
therefore,  really  the  death  aud  the  resurrection  of  a  god-Sun,  that 
was  celebrated  at  Tyre,  at  the  Winter  solstice,  through  this  pyre  of 
Hercules ;  and  already  we  seize,  in  its  primitive  and  original  form, 
one  of  the  principal  traits  of  the  legend  of  the  Hellenic  Hercules." 
*  *  *  And  this  lamented  scholar  continues  to  show  how  Movers 
(Die  Phcenicier,  I,  386)  proves  that,  in  the  time  of  Ahab  (1st  Kings, 
XVHI,  27),  a  "god  deceased  and  resuscitated"  was  a  fundamental 
idea  in  the  Jewish  theocracy ;  as  well  as  to  point  out  the  relations 
between  this  Semitic  myth  and  that  of  the  Phoenician  god  Adonis ; 
who  is  the  Tham-uz  bewept  by  Israelitish  females,  at  the  gate  of  the 
holy  Temple,  in  the  time  of  the  Prophets  (Ezehiel,  VHI,  14). 

If  we  seek  at  Rabbinical  sources  for  their  various  supputations 
concerning  the  advent  of  their  Jewish  "Messiah,"  the  most  learned 
and  critical  of  their  standard  divines,  Maimonides,  acquaints  us  that 
— "the  Messiah  should  have  eome  in  the  XHIth  century,  in  the 
year  1316.  But  as  that  has  not  yet  happened,  others  refer  the  end 
of  their  misfortunes  to  the  year  1492,  others  to  the  year  1600,  and 
others  again  to  the  year  1940  :"  *  *  *  some  even  holding  "that  the 
MeS/miaH  hath  been  a  long  time  born,  and  remains  concealed  at 
Rome  until  Elias  come  to  crown  him." 2'12 

These  few  citations,  confirmatory  of  my  distrust,  expressed  in  our 
last  publication,213  of  any  chronological  systems,  suffice  to  establish 
accuracy  of  fact  and  deduction.  The  toils  of  Sisyphus,  or  the 
pangs  of  Tantalus,  seem  nothing  compared  with  those  experienced 
by  hundreds  of  chronologists  who,  rivalling  in  pertinacity  the  Rosi- 
crusian's  search  after  the  "  elixir  of  life,"  have  exhausted  every  expe- 
dient, our  patience  and  their  arithmetic,  to  discover  when  our  world 
had  a  beginning.  The  superstition  as  to  the  possibility  of  success  in 
any  such  endeavors  is  now  fast  taking  rank,  among  men  of  science, 
with  its  extinct  corollary  —  so  miserably  distressing  to  our  Boeotian 
ancestors,  about  the  year  1000  of  our  era — viz :  anxious  cipherings 
as  to  the  world's  termination.     On  this  phase  of  humanity's  cyclic 

242  Basnage,  op.  cit.,  pp.  374—5. 

243  Types  of  Mankind,  pp,  657-62. 


THE     POL  YGENIST  S.  481 

hallucinations,24"1  it  has  been  well  observed  by  "W.  Rathbone  Greg,245 
that  "  the  error  of  Paul  (1  Thess.  IV,  15)  about  the  approaching  end 
of  the  world,  was  shared  by  all  the  Apostles  (James,  V,  8 ;  2  Peter, 
HI,  12 ;  1  John,  H",  18 ;  Jude,  v.  18)." 

From  Hebrew  to  Assyrian  subjects  the  transition  is  natural;  if  but 
to  observe  that  very  trifling,  as  regards  chronological  determinations, 
has  been  the  progress  since  Layard's  second  Expedition,  published 
in  1853.246  Col.  Rawlinson's  various  papers  in  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society's  Journal,247  together  with  his  unceasing  announcements  of 
new  discoveries,  through  the  London  "Athenaeum"  especially,  have 
not  been  yet  an-anged  into  a  "corps  de  doctrine:"  so  that,  except  the 
summary  tables  in  the  last  edition  of  Mr.  Vaux's  learned  work,243  there 
is  little  settled  about  cuneiform  annals,  whether  in  England  or  on  the 
Continent ;  notwithstanding  the  enormous  increase  of  materials,  due 
to  the  local  exhumations  of  Ross,  Loftus,  Eresnel,  Oppert,  Place, 
Rassam,  Jones,  and  other  laborers  around  Mosul  and  Bagdad. 
Cuneatic  students  (as  was  in  part  the  case  15  years  ago  with  Egyp- 
tian hieroglyphics,  which  possess  clews  that  the  others  have  not)  are 
still  struggling,  not  merely  with  the  philology  of  three  distinct 
tongues,  Semitic,  Indo-Germanic,  and  Scythic,  encountered  in  arrow- 
headed  inscriptions  of  different  epochas  and  at  different  localities, 
but  against  the  more  arduous  phonetic  complications  of  the  various 
groups  or  signs  in  which  archaic  dialects  of  these  three  idioms  are 
expressed.  In  consequence,  that  which  is  read  one  way  by  Rawlin- 
son  in  England,  is,  generally  speaking,  read  in  another  by  Hincks 
in  Ireland;  both  are  oftentimes  obnoxious  to  the  conflicting  versions 

244  Foebes  Winslow,  "On  Moral  and  Criminal  Epidemics,"  —  Journ.  of  Psychol.  3Ied. 
and  Mental  Pathology,  April,  1856  ;  Art.  VI,  pp.  251-2.  Alfeed  Mauey,  Les  Mystiques 
exlatiques  el  les  Stigmatises, — extrait  des  "  Annales  Medico-psychologiques,"  Paris,  1855 ;  pp.' 
40-50.     Also  his  review  of  Lelut's  Demon  de  Socrate,  in  Aihenceum  Francais,  1  Mars,  1856. 

245  The  Creed  of  Christendom,  London,  8vo,  1851 ;  pp.  19-25,  181-3. 
2«  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  702. 

247  Outlines  of  Assyrian  History,  1852; — Notes  on  the  early  History  of  Babylonia,  1855. 

248  Nineveh  and  Persepolis,  4th  edition,  revised  and  enlarged  —  London,  12mo,  1854,  pp. 
506-9.  While  writing,  I  see  by  the  London  Times  (Aug.  12,  1856)  that,  at  the  meeting  of 
the  Brit.  Assoc,  for  the  Adv.  of  Science,  just  held  at  Cheltenham,  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson  is 
reported  to  have  "  shown  that  the  impressions  on  the  bricks  found  at  '  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,' 
were  marked  with  the  name  of  a  king,  which  he  thinks  identical  with  the  Chedorlaomer  of 
Genesis,  and  at  least  2000  years  before  Christ."  I  have  no  doubt  that,  at  the  rate  Assyrian 
"  confirmations"  are  going  on,  the  contemporary  history  of  Abraham  himself  would  yet  be 
found  in  cuneiform,  but  for  a  slight  exegetical  diffculty ;  viz. :  the  age  of  the  unknown 
writer  of  the  XlVth  chapter  of  Genesis  (Types  of  Mankind,  p.  604,  note  111).  [The  above 
was  penned  last  Sept.  Since  then  I  have  read  Col.  Rawlinson's  most  interesting  "Dis- 
course" (Athenaum,  Lond.  1856,  pp.  1024-5);  and  learn  that  the  Assyrian  empire  was  not 
instituted  before  the  13th  century,  e.  c, — a  modern  date  to  Egyptologists.  When  cuneatic 
students  in  England  are  enabled,  through  arrow-headed  typography,  to  rival  Oppert's 
resources  in  "  Imprhriene  Imperiale"  (Bui.  Archeol.  At/ten.  Ft.,  Mai,  1856),  palaeography 
will  place  more  faith  in  their  translations.] 

31 


482  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

of  Oppert  and  De  Saulcy  in  France ;  whilst,  in  Germany,  the  father 
of  cuneiform  decipherers,  Grotefend,  frequently  prefers  a  reading  of 
his  own.  Out  of  this  embarrassing  state  of  affairs,  a  feeling  of  mis- 
trust has  gradually  arisen,  especially  at  Paris,  the  centre  of  archaeo- 
logical criticism ;  which  has  found  voice,  at  last,  in  the  pages  of 
Penan  j249  than  whom,  amid  masters  of  Semitish  tongues  and  history, 
none  are  better  qualified  to  judge. 

"  If  one  must  feel  grateful  toward  those  persons  who  venture  into 
these  unknown  lands,  whilst  exposing  themselves  to  a  thousand 
chances  of  error  and  of  ill  success,  the  greatest  reserve  is  commanded 
in  presence  of  contradictory  results,  obtained  through  an  uncertain 
method,  and  sometimes  presented  without  any  demonstration.  Is  it 
not  excusable  to  doubt,  in  such  matters,  when  one  sees  the  man  who 
has  made  for  himself  the  greatest  renown  in  Assyrian  studies,  M. 
Pawlinson,  sustain  that  the  Assyrians  did  not  distinguish  proper 
names  by  the  sound,  but  by  the  sense  ;  and  that,  in  order  to  indicate 
the  name  of  a  king,  for  instance,  it  was  permitted  to  employ  all  the 
synonymes  which  could  approximately  render  the  same  idea ;  —  that 
the  name  of  each  god  is  often  represented  by  monograms  differing 
from  each  other,  and  arbitrarily  chosen  ;  —  that  the  same  given  cha- 
racter was  read  in  several  ways,  and  must  be  considered  in  turns  as 
ideographic  or  phonetic,  alphabetic  or  syllabic,250  according  to  tbe 
needs  of  interpretation;  —  when  one  sees,  I  say,  M.  Rawlinson  avow 
that  many  of  his  readings  are  given  exclusively  for  the  convenience 
of  identification  [as  amongst  one  of  the  last  beautiful  "confirmations" 
— Daniel's  herbivorous  Nebochadnassar !] ;  that  it  is  often  permitted 
to  modify  the  forms  of  characters  to  render  them  more  intelligible : 
—  when,  lastly,  one  sees,  upon  such  frail  hypotheses,  a  chronology 
and  a  chimerical  pantheon  of  the  ancient  empire  of  Assyria  con- 
structed ?  What  must  we  think  of  the  inscriptions,  called  Medic, 
which  would  be  written,  if  one  must  credit  the  same  Savant,  in  a 
language  wherein  the  declension  would  be  Turkish,  the  general 
structure  of  the  discourse  Indo-European,  the  conjugation  Tartar  and 
Celtic,  the  pronoun  Semitic,  the  vocabulary  Turkish,  mixed  with 
Persian  and  with  Semitic  ?  To  this  method  I  prefer  even  that  of  M. 
Nbrris,  who,  persuaded,  like  MM.  Westergaard  and  De  Saulcy,  that 
the  language  of  the  inscriptions  of  the  third  species  is  Scythic  or 

249  Hisloire  et  Systeme  compare  des  Langues  Semiiiques,  Paris,  1855;  pp.  64-9,  70. 

250  It  is  nevertheless  true,  that  a  sign  does  often  possess  these  different  powers,  and  must 
so  be  read,  in  hieroglyphics ;  but  in  the  latter  form  of  writing  (whether  cuneatics  possess 
such  indices  to  the  method  of  reading  or  not),  the  groups  themselves  furnish  the  key  by 
which  to  know  its  value.  Conf.  Lepsius,  Lcllre  a  Rosellini,  Annali,  1837,  pp.  31-47: — Bun- 
sen,  Egypt's  Place,  1848,  I,  pp.  594-600: — De  Rouge,  Me'moire  sur  le  Tombeau  d'Ahmes,  1851, 
p.  178:— and  Birch,  Crystal  Palace  Sand-Book,  1856,  pp.  222-9,  248. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  483 

Tartaric  (what  I  do  not  mean  to  deny),  undertakes  to  explain  them 
through  Ostiak  and  Tcheremiss,  and  claims  to  give  us,  with  the  help 
of  the  inscriptions,  a  complete  Scythic  grammar.  One  must  be  pro- 
foundly wanting  in  the  sentiment  of  philology,  to  imagine  that,  by 
assembling  upon  one's  table  a  few  dictionaries,  the  infinitely-delicate 
problem  can  be  solved,  if  it  be  not  insoluble,  of  an  unknown  tongue 
written  in  an  alphabet  in  major  portion  unknown.  Even  were  the 
language  of  the  inscriptions  perfectly  determined,  it  could  not  be, 
save  through  an  intimate  knowledge  of  all  the  neighboring  idioms, 
that  one  might  arrive  at  giving  with  certainty  the  grammatical  ex- 
planation and  the  interpretation  of  such  obscure  texts." 

Taking  China,  on  our  way  back  to  Egypt  from  Chaldea,  it  is  to  be 
remarked  that,  since  the  labors,  hitherto  unimpeachable,  of  the 
Jesuit  missionaries,  200  years  ago,  little  or  nothing  has  been  done, 
in  that  impenetrable  country,  by  European  criticism  of  their  ancient 
monuments  or  annals,  to  invalidate  the  sketch  of  Chinese  chronology 
borrowed  from  Pauthier.251  ISTo  preconceived  opinions  (or  desires), 
on  my  part,  induce  suppression  of  doubts  as  to  the  historic  claims  of 
this  Sinologico-Jesuit  account  of  Chinamen's  antiquity  to  absolute 
credence.  There  are  improbable  circumstances  about  the  re-finding 
copies  of  their  ancient  books,  after  the  destruction  of  libraries  by 
Chi-hoang-ti,252  about  B.C.  213,  —  parallel  with  librarian  auto-da- 
fe's  elsewhere — on  which  some  more  positive  narration  might  be  con- 
soling ;  and  Davis  ^  has  remarked  how,  in  the  flowery  empire  itself, 
"a  famous  commentator,  named  Choofootse,  observes:  'It  is  impos- 
sible to  give  entire  credit  to  the  accounts  of  those  remote  ages.' 
China  has,  in  fact,  her  mythology,  in  common  with  all  other  nations." 
She  had,  also,  at  very  early  times, — hundreds  of  years  prior  to  the 
Grecian  Thales — her  astronomical  observations.  Among  these  (if 
any  point  seemed  certain  in  Chinese  or  other  histories)  were  two 
eclipses  of  the  sun,  recorded  as  having  taken  place  in  the  reign  of 
Tchong-kang,  whom  Father  Amiot's  table  places  about  b.  c.  2159-47.254 
The  former  was  computed,  by  Gaubil,  to  have  occurred  on  the  13th 
Oct.,  2155  b.  c. ;  and  by  Freret  and  Cassini,  during  b.  c.  2007  :  the 
latter  by  Rothman,  resuming  Chinese  supputations,  in  the  Julian 
year  2128.  Now,  it  is  unfortunate  that,  with  the  precise  "  Tables 
Abregees,  composees  par  M.  Largeteau  pour  faciliter  le  Calcul  des 
Syzygies  ecliptiques  et  non  ecliptiques,"  neither  this  astronomer  nor 

251  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  695-7. 

252  Pauthier,  Chine,  Paris,  8vo,  1837;   pp.  222,  236. 

253  The  Chinese,  12mo,  London,  I,  p.  157. 

254  Pauthier,  Chine  d'apres  les  documents  chinois,  Paris,  8vo,  1837,  p.  480: — "  Histoire 
critique  du  Chou-king" — Livres  Sacre's  de  V  Orient,  Paris,  8vo,  1843 ;  pp.  3-5. 


484  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

M.  Biot255  was,  down  to  1843,  able  to  find  that  either  of  two  solar 
eclipses,  which  really  occurred  at  that  remote  period,  could  have 
been  visible  in  China  at  all ! 

As  to  Hindostali,  the  fiat  of  Klaproth256  stands  unshaken  by  any 
more  recently  discovered  facts ;  at  the  same  time  that  the  plurality 
of  later  critics,  out  of  Germany,857 — a  country  where  the  affinities 
of  Sanscrit  with  Allemanic  idioms  had,  indeed,  superinduced  a  state 
of  rapture  that  is  beginning  to  melt  away — corroborate  the  modern- 
ness  of  its  annalists:  ""We  are  ignorant  of  what  was  [only  in  the 
7th  century,  b.  c.  !],  in  these  remote  times,  the  state  of  India."  *  *  * 
"  The  total  want  of  materials  has  forced  me  to  pass  over  in  silence 
the  history  and  the  antiquities  of  India.  The  political  geography 
of  this  vast  country,  even  a  long  time  after  it  had  been  inhabited  by 
the  Mohammedans,  is  still  very  little  known  to  us." 

Prinsep258  shattered  the  alleged  antiquity  of  Hindostanic  inscrip- 
tions ;  nothing,  throughout  the  peninsula,  ascending  within  four  or 
five  generations  of  the  modern  age  of  Buddha,  —  assumed  at  the 
6th  century  b.  c.259 

And,  if  art  (vide  Pulszky's  chapter,  II.  ante)  be  chosen  as  the  crite- 
rion, the  previous  investigations  of  Langles  had  ruined  the  fabled 
age  of  India's  structures ;  "  because,  according  to  the  judicious  ob- 
servation of  Mr.  Scott  Waring  {Mist,  of  the  Mahrattas,  p.  54),  there 
exists  no  authentic  information  anterior  to  the  establishment  of  the 
Mussulmans  in  the  peninsula  (before  the  14th  century  of  the  vulgar 
era) ;  and  it  would  be  superfluous  to  seek  for  some  historical  docu- 
ments in  works  written  in  Sanscrit."  *  *  *  The  pagoda  of  Djugger- 
naut,  begun  in  the  9th  century,  "  is  a  new  proof  in  favor  of  our 
opinion  upon  the  modernness  of  the  monuments  of  the  Peninsula." 
*  *  *  Ellora,  by  the  Brahmans  estimated  at  7915  years  old,  was  by 
Muslim  writers  reduced  to  900;  and  thus,  says  Langles,  "the  date 
of  600  to  700  years  seems  to  me  more  probable  than  that  of  7915." 
These  rock-temples  present  traces  of  Greek  architecture :  their  ele- 

255  Journal  des  Savants,  Paris,  184.3  ;  lr  article ;  tirage  a,  part,  pp.  4-8.' 

256  Tableaux  historiques  de  I'Asie,  Paris,  4to,  1826;  pp.  2,  286. 

257  De  Gobineau,  (Inegalile  des  Races,  II,  pp.  101-3),  has  allowed  himself  to  be  somewhat 
carried  away  as  to  Arian  antiquity ;  but  his  observations  on  old-school  philologers  (p.  105) 
seem  to  me  to  be  correct. 

258  Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Soc.  of  Bengal;  Calcutta,  1828;  VII,  pp.  156-67,  219-282:— 
and  Stkes,  Jour.  R.  Asiatic  Soc,  London,  1841 ;  VI,  Art.  14,  Appendix  III. 

259  Monuments  anciens  et  modernes  de  V Hindoxtstan,  Paris,  folio,  1821 ;  I,  pp.  117,  131 ; 
II,  12-3,  66-8,  70,  169—70,  184,  208.  Cf.  also  Bbiggs,  Aboriginal  Race  of  India,  E.  Asiat. 
Soc,  June,  1852  ;  pp.  7-9,  14.  The  Arian-Hindoos  did  not  even  conquer  the  Dekhan  much 
before  the  5th  century  of  our  era: — the  modernness  of  Elephanta,  Salsette,  &c,  was  sus- 
pected at  sight  by  the  judicious  observer  Bishop  Hebek  (Narrative  of  a  Journey  through 
the  upper  Provinces  of  India,  London,  4to,  1828;  II,  pp.  179,  192). 


THE    POLTGENISTS.  485 

phants  were  cut  by  foreign  artists;  and  "the  leaves  of  Acanthus 
are  badly  drawn  and  capsized  around  the  base  of  a  pillar  of  Hindoo 
style ;  so  that  this  base  gives  the  idea  of  a  Corinthian  capital  turned 
upside-down."    The  Hindoo  zodiacs,  too,  are  all  Greek  and  modern ! 

We  have  seen  that  Palestine,  Mesopotamia,  and  essentially  Hind- 
ostan,  afford  no  stand-point  for  annual  chronology,  even  to  the  year 
B.  c.  1000 ;  and  that,  beyond  the  twenty-third  century  prior  to  our 
era,  at  the  outside,  China  fails  to  supply  us  with  proofs  of  anything 
more  than  a  long  previous  unhistorical  existence.  There  are  no 
other  lands,  except  Egypt,  whose  historical  period  attains  to  pa- 
rallel antiquity  with  the  two  first-named  countries;  notwithstanding 
abundant  evidence  of  Etrurian,  Phoenician,  and  Lydian,  civilizations 
of  much  earlier  date  than  2850  years  backwards  from  our  time. 
Pelasgic  Greece  falls  into  the  latter  category.  Whether  as  nomads 
or  err  ants,  as  the  ancient  or  the  old,2eo  "the  remembrance  of  these 
most  ancient  inhabitants  of  Greece  loses  itself  in  transmythological 
ages."  Their  successors  on  Hellenic  soil  have  left  us  no  determinate 
chronology  beyond  the  Olympiads,  beginning  with  the  foot-race  won 
by  Coroebus  in  the  year  b.  o.  776  ;261  and  these  victories  were  not 
arranged  in  their  present  order  for  500  years  later,  viz.,  by  one 
Timseus  of  Sicily,  about  b.  c.  264. 

"  The  Pelasgi  and  the  other  primitive  populations  of  Greece," 
continues  Maury,  "do  not  appear  to  have  possessed  any  ancient 
tradition  upon  cosmogony  and  the  first  ages  of  human  society. 
They  were,  in  this  respect,  in  the  same  ignorance,  in  the  same 
vagueness,  wherein  the  savage  septs  of  Asia,  of  Oceanica,  and  of 
the  New  World,  are  still  found,  who  have  not  been  brought  into 
contact  with  more  enlightened  nations.  One  encounters  nothing,  in 
fact,  among  the  primitive  Hellenes,  analogous  to  the  cosmogonies  of 
Genesis,  of  the  books  of  Zoroaster,  or  the  laws  of  Manou.  Which 
sufficiently  proves,  that  the  intellectual  state  of  these  Pelasgic  tribes 
was  very  far  removed  from  that  of  the  Israelitish,  Persian,  or  Hindoo 
peoples."  Like  these  Asiatics,  the  Greeks  of  a  later  day  anthro- 
morphosized  inventions ;  or  else  made  the  proper  name  of  a  country, 
a  river,  or  a  hill,  the  primordial  human  ancestor  of  a  nation.262 
"  Thus,  in  Elis,  a  personage  whose  name  was  taken  from  that  of  the 
Olympic  games,  Aethlios,  passed  for  the  first  king  of  the  country, 
and  was  regarded  as  the  son  of  Zeus  and  Protogeneia. 

"  So,  likewise,  in  antiquity,  the  name  of  pretended  inventors  of 

260  Alfred  Mauky,  Recherches  sur  la  Religion  et  le  Culte  des  Populations  primitives  de  la 
Grece,  Paris,  8vo,  1855;  pp.  2,  20,  30-1,  201-4,  216-24. 

261  Ajjthon,  Dictionary  of  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities,  New  York,  1843  ;  pp.  678-9. 

262  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  549,  551-2,  for  parallel  examples. 


486  THE    MONOGEKISTS    AND 

certain  arts  was  forged  through  the  aid  of  words  which  designated 
either  the  objects  or  the  instruments  of  which  the  arts  make  use,  or 
even  by  the  help  of  the  proper  names  of  tbese  arts  themselves.  It 
is  thereby  that  Closter  (KXwtfi^p),  that  is,  the  spindle,  was  held  to  be 
the  inventor  of  the  art  of  spinuing  wool.  The  art  of  striking  fire 
from  flint  was  discovered,  it  was  said,  by  Pyrodes  (nopw^s),  that  is, 
the  burning,  the  kindled,  son  of  Oilix  (silex),  the  flint.  Tbe  'pise' 
(luteum  cedificium)  had  been  invented  by  Technes  (Ts^v^s),  art,  incor- 
rectly written  Doeius  in  the  manuscripts  of  Pliny ;  the  rule  (regula) 
and  not  the  tile  (tegula),  as  one  reads  in  some  manuscripts,  had  had 
for  its  author  Cinyrus,  son  of  Acribeias.  The  name  of  this  Cinyrus 
is  derived  from  the  root  canna ;  and  a  false  reading  has  substituted, 
for  the  name  of  Acribeias  (dxpcfism,  rectitude),  that  of  Agriopas. 
Ghalcas  (XaXxos,  brass),  son  of  Athamas  ('Aoaf«*j,  hard  metal),  had 
made  the  first  bucklers,  &c. ;" — just  as,  in  king  James's  version, 
TrtJBuLKaIN",  literally,  the  God-  Vulcan,  has  become  transmuted 
into  "Tubal-cain,   an  instructer   of  every  artificer  in  brass  and 


263  Genesis  iv,  22: — conf.  Gliddon,  Olia  JEgyptiaca,  p.  141,  note. 

Every  one  knows  that  whether  "GOD  appeared  in  the  flesh,"  or  "who  appeared  in  the 
flesh,"  of  1  Timothy  iii,  16,  depends  upon  OC  or  ©C  in  the  Codex  Alexandrinus  at  the 
British  Museum;  which  biliteral,  through  pious  handlings,  is  now  effaced!  (Cardinal 
Wiseman,  Connection  between  Science  and  revealed  Religion,  London,  1836 ;  II,  pp.  168-9. 
See  also  the  same  fact  in  Wetstenii  Nov.  Testament.,  II,  p.  864 ;  cited  in  Bishop  Marsh's 
Michcelis,  I,  p.  577,  notes.) 

"The  history  of  Saint  Ursula  and  of  the  11,000  virgins  whose  innumerable  relics  are 
shown,  arranged  in  one  of  the  churches,  at  Cologne,  owes  its  origin  to  an  expression  of 
the  old  calendars.  Vrsula  et  Undecimella,  VV.  MM. ;  that  is  to  say,  '  Saint  Ursula  and  Saint 
Undicimella,  virgins  and  martyrs.'  Ignorant  readers  have,  as  one  perceives,  singularly 
multiplied  the  latter  saint.  Conf.  Brady,  Clavis  Calendaria,  t.  2,  p.  334."  (Alfred  Maury, 
Ligendes  Pieuses  du  Moyen-Age,  Paris,  8vo,  1843;  p.  214,  note.) 

Here  is  one  Hebrew,  another  Greek,  and  a  third  Latin,  example,  out  of  hundreds  at  hand 
(in  Hebrew  especially),  to  illustrate  historical  metamorphoses.  Where  either  instance  does 
not  suit  the  taste  of  a  Boeotian,  it  may  that  of  an  Athenian.  But  for  the  orientalist  I  add 
an  inedited  specimen,  due  to  the  kindness  of  a  Persian  scholar,  my  old  friend  Major-General 
Bagnold,  of  the  Hon.  East-Ind.  Comp.'s  Service. 

In  the  Arabic  alphabet,  adopted  with  slight  modifications  by  Persians,  the  letter  zetn, 
Z,  is  distinguished  from  the  letter  re,  B,  only  by  a  "  nuqta,"  dot,  or  point,  placed  above 
the  former  letter's  head.  "  The  author  of  the  Anwarry  Saheilly  jocularly  criticizes  the  use 
of  points  by  an  amusing  couplet,  which  I  translate  almost  verbatim, and  paraphrase: 

'If  Anwarry,  within  this  world, 
Could  wish  to  live  without  its  ze"himut 

(misery)  V^^-^-y 
Nature  brings  forth  a  filthy  fly 
To  dung  o'er  the  head  of  re  in  rehimut 


(mercy)  l^^&f.'  " 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  487 

"  In  the  time  of  Pausanias,  tlie  people  of  Corinth,  to  'whom  the 
circumstances  of  the  foundation  of  their  city  were  totally  unknown, 
recounted  that  this  city  had  been  built  by  a  king  named  Corinthus. 

"All  these  personages  of  poetical  fiction  were  attached,  afterwards, 
to  the  divers  countries  from  which  the  Greeks  fancied  themselves  to 
have  originated ;  deceived  as  they  were  by  resemblances  of  traditions 
and  the  lying  assertions  of  strangers  emulous  of  being  the  parents 
of  their  civilization.  It  is  hence  that  Phoenicia,  Media,  Egypt,  Libya, 
Ethiopia,  and  India,  were  regarded  as  the  cradle  of  these  heroes, 
all  Greeks  by  their  origin  and  their  name, — traditions  comparatively 
modern,  that  have  led  more  than  one  scholar  astray,  but  of  which 
criticism  has  definitively  ruined  the  authenticity." 

In  justice  to  my  friend  M.  Maury,  I  ought  to  mention  that  his 
foot-notes  sustain  every  statement  with  irrefragable  testimony.  We 
behold,  however,  in  Greece, —  a  country  about  which  we  possess 
more  information  than  concerning  any  other  on  earth, — thanks  to  her 
ancient  historians  and  to  modern  archseologists  —  how  human  ori- 
gines,  in  one  and  the  best-represented  locality,  are  absolutely  un- 
known. If  in  storied  Hellas  such  is  the  case,  what  must  we  expect 
to  find  about  man's  primordial  advent  upon  our  planet,  among  less 
historical  nations  ?  The  prefatory  remarks  to  the  "American  Realm" 
of  our  Ethnographic  Tableau  will  illustrate  another  phase  of  this 
argument. 

The  chronological  deficiencies  encountered  everywhere  else  compel 
a  final  return  to  the  monuments  of  the  Nile.  Amid  their  petroglyphs 
and  papyri  alone  can  we  hope  to  weave  a  thread  by  which  to  measure 
the  minimum  length  of  time  that  a  type  of  humanity  must  have 
occupied  that  valley.  In  our  former  work,261  a  synopsis  of  hiero- 
glyphical  investigations  exhibited  how  Egyptian  chronology  stood 
in  the  year  1853.  Four  years  have  passed,  and  I  have  nothing  to 
alter.  Correct  then,  the  same  views  are  accurate  now ;  for,  with 
the  exception  of  an  appendix  to  the  Misses  Horner's  translation265 
of  his  travels,  Chev.  Lepsius  has  not  more  definitively  treated  on 
chronology;  nor,  up  to  the  spring  of  last  year  (1856),  had  he  published 
his  Book  of  Kings  ;  until  the  appearance  of  which,  I  have  consistently 
maintained  since  1844,  no  professed  system  of  Egyptian  chronology 
can,  in  the  very  nature  of  human  things,  possess  solid  or  durable 
claims  to  attention : — such  as  have  recently  appeared,  worthy  of  respect, 
being  either  likeM.  Brunet  de  Presle's,266  a  re-examination  of  the  classi- 
cal sources ;  or  else  like  Chev.  Bunsen's  second  volume  {ubi  supra),  a 

°"  Types  of  Mankind,  686-9. 

265  Letters  from  Egypt,  Ethiopia,  &c.  (supra,  note  198). 

266  Examen  critique  de  la  Succession  des  dynasties  egyptiennes,  Part  I,  Paris,  8yo,  1850. 


488  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

labyrinth  of  arithmetical  adjustments  satisfactory  to  no  one  but 
their  learned  calculator;  or  again,  similar  to  the  useful  but  very 
piece-meal  coverings  of  a  skeleton  chronology  by  M.  Brugsch, — ^ 
who,  in  the  main,  agrees  with  the  time-measurements  previously 
laid  down  by  Lepsius ;  or  finally,  ingenious  attempts  at  unsettling 
that  which  had  been  generally  agreed  upon,  by  Champollionists, 
through  M.  Poitevin's268  attorney -like  process  of  detecting  some  sup- 
posititious flaw  in  the  indictment. 

For  myself,  therefore,  as  before  stated,  I  have  no  more  precise 
Egyptian  chronology  to  offer  than  that  already  sketched  in  Types  of 
Mankind;  and  having  waited  some  twelve  years  for  Lepsius,  it  is 
small  hardship  to  extend  one's  patience  for  a  few  months  longer : 
because,  as  I  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  from  his  own  lips  last  year, 
during  our  rencontre  over  the  new  treasures  of  the  Louvre  Museum, 
the  Book  of  Kings  must  now  be  near  the  point  of  its  appearance  at 
Berlin.  The  delay  of  publication,  since  its  announcement  about 
1845,269  is  not  to  be  regretted.  The  Chief  of  the  Prussian  scientific 
mission,  upon  his  return  from  the  East  in  1846,  had  first  to  arrange 
the  periodical  issue  of  the  magnificent  Denkmaler,  by  no  means  yet 
completed ;  and  next,  in  such  standard  works  as  the  Ohronologie  der 
JEgypter,  followed  by  innumerable  minor  essays,  to  clear  away  erro- 
neous hypotheses  whilst  indicating  novel  facts,  before  the  chronologi- 
cal frame-work,  resulting  from  accumulated  discoveries,  could  be 
filled  up  in  method  satisfactory  to  archseologists. 

Through  such  wise  procedure,  his  Book  of  Kings  will  now  embody 
the  enormous  series  of  historical  data  derived  (only  since  1850)  from 
the  Memphite  exhumations  of  M.  Aug.  Mariette —  latterly  ap- 
pointed, by  Imperial  discrimination,  one  of  the  Conservateurs  du 
Musee  du  Louvre. 

"With  an  outline  of  this  gentleman's  conquests  in  Egyptian 
science,  my  addenda  to  the  pages270  of  our  last  volume  (wherein  his 
name  foreshadows  revelations,  the  extent  of  which  none  but  himself 
could  theu  appreciate)  may  properly  close.  It  was  my  good  fortune 
to  arrive  at  Paris  in  Nov.  1854,  within  a  week  of  M.  Mariette's 
return  there,  fresh  from  the  scenes  of  his  four-year's  toil  beneath 
desert-ground  with  the  superficies  of  which,  around  the  Pyramids 
of  Sakkara,  I  had  been  familiar  from  1831  to  1841.  Introduced  to 
him  at  the  Institute  by  our  collaborator  M.  Alfred  Maury,  nothing 

267  Reisberichte  aus  JEgypten  (supra,  note  199). 

268  Memoire  sur  les  Sept  Cartouches  de  la  Table  cTAbydos  attribute  a  la  XII"  dynaslie  e'yypt- 
ienne — Extrait  de  la  Revue  Archeologique,  lle  Annfe,  Paris,  1854. 

569  Gliddon,  Appendix,  1846,  to  all  subsequent  editions  of  "Chapters  on  Early  Egyptian 
History,"  p.  3. 

2'0  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  675,  686. 


THE     POLTGEKISTS.  489 

could  exceed  the  frankness  and  prolonged  kindness  of  his  bearing 
towards  an  elder  Miotic  resident.  M.  Mariette  is  too  highminded 
for  me  to  express  more  than  a  grateful  acknowledgment  of  facili- 
ties by  him  accorded  to  me ;  not  forgetting  either  those  of  his  able 
coadjutor  at  the  Louvre,  my  friend  M.  T.  Deveria. 

The  first  reliable  announcement  of  results  of  "  Excavations  at  the 
Serapeum  of  Memphis"  appeared  over  the  signature  of  a  far-famed 
archeologue,  F.  de  Saulcy  de  l'lnstitut  :271  but  the  treasures  brought 
thence  by  Mariette,  were  not  arranged  for  public  inspection  in  the 
Louvre-galleries,  until  the  15th  May,  1855,  during  the  Exposition 
universale.     The  facts  are  these. 

Sent  out  to  Egypt  "  en  mission"  in  quest  of  ancient  Coptic  MSS., 
the  curiosity  of  our  Egyptologist  was  excited  at  Alexandria,  Aug. 
1850,  by  the  sight  of  numerous  uniform  Sphinxes  of  calcareous 
stone,  covered  with  Greek  inscriptions,  said  to  have  been  brought 
from  Sakkara,  the  necropolis  of  Memphis.  Following  at  Cairo  the 
advice  of  Linant-Bey,  during  a  trip  to  the  localities,  M.  Mariette 
discovered,  peeping  out  from  the  sand,  one  of  this  self-same  kind  of 
sphinx  in  situ.  For  a  man  of  his  education  and  quick  energy  this 
indication  sufficed.  Gangs  of  workmen  were  immediately  employed 
to  clear  away  the  sand  which,  since  the  days  of  Strabo  —  B.C.  15  — 
had  accumulated  over  these  rocky  undulations  to  a  depth  varying 
from  10  to  70  feet;  and,  by  the  25th  Dec.  of  the  same  year,  an 
avenue,  in  length  above  6600  feet,  was  laid  bare,  flanked  by  the 
remains  of  a  double  row  of  sphinxes,  of  which  141  were  in  good 
preservation. 

At  the  end  of  this  alley,  a  little  further  exhumation  disclosed  — 
astounding  to  relate,  in  an  Egyptian  cemetery  —  a  hemicycle  formed 
of  Greek  statues  of  Hellenic  worthies;  Pindar,  Lycurgus,  Solon, 
Euripides,  Pythagoras,  Plato,  JEschylus,  Homer,  Aristotle !  Thence 
branched  off  a  paved  dromos  to  the  right  and  left ;  the  latter  path- 
way to  a  temple  built  by  Pharaoh  Amyrtseus  (about  b.  c.  400)  in 
honor  of  Apis;  the  former  straight  to  the  long-lost  Serapeum. 
Two  chapels,  one  Greek  and  the  other  Egyptian,  intersected  the 
middle  of  this  road  on  its  left  side ;  and,  in  this  last,  large  as  a  calf 
at  8  months,  was  inclosed  a  most  beautiful  and  perfect  statue, 
carved  in  white  calcareous  stone,  of  the  sacred  bull  Apis!  As 
probably  the  one  visited  by  Strabo,  it  now  ranks  among  other  price- 
less treasures  of  the  Louvre.  Infinite  inscriptions,  Egyptian,  Greek, 
and  even  Phoenician,  containing  the  proscynemata,  votive  offerings, 
of  generations  of  foreign  visitors  to  the  holy  shrine ;  Hellenic  and 
Pharaonic  bronzes,  effigies,  and  monuments  of  many  materials  and 

271  Le  Constilulionnel,  Paris,  9th  and  10th  December,  1854;  Feuillelons. 


490  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

objects,  in  and  around  this  sanctuary  of  Serapis,  were  the  reward  of 
eight  months'  fatigue :  when,  as  usual  in  Ottoman  lands,  local  in- 
trigues and  international  jealousies  arrested  the  works  for  a  season ; 
until  the  prompt  interference  of  the  French  Government,  with  a 
grant  of  30,000  francs  for  expenses,  enabled  the  undaunted  explorer 
to  resume  his  active  day-labors  in  Feb.  1852.  His  nocturnal  re- 
searches were  never  abandoned  however ;  and  his  gallant  defiance 
as  well  of  falling  blocks  as  of  assassination  had  been  crowned,  on 
the  night  of  the  12th  Nov.  1851,  by  entrance  into  a  subterranean 
city  of  death,  —  the  vast  sepulchral  caves  of  more  than  64  genera- 
tions of  Apises,  covering  a  period  of  above  15  centuries,  were 'nightly 
trod  by  Gallic  foot :  that  is  to  say,  more  than  1600  years  since  the 
last  Gaulish  legionary  had  stared  at  Apis  dead,  or  that  in  Alex- 
andria, about  the  times  of  St.  Mark,  there  had  been  proclaimed  the 
advent  of  Apis  living:  —  £wr,v  sirepxwevw,  "the  life  which  comes;" 
narrate  the  ecclesiastical  historians,  Pufmus  (pbiit  a.  d.  408),  Sozo- 
men  (obiit  450),  and  Socrates  (flour.  440) ;  the  last  of  whom,  ac- 
quainted with  a  book  which,  according  to  St.  Jerome,  Sophronius 
had  composed  concerning  the  destruction  of  the  Alexandrian  Sera- 
peum,  about  a. d.  391,  relates  that — "The  Christians,  who  regard 
the  cross  as  a  sign  of  the  salutary  passion  of  Christ,  thought  this 
sign  [the  crux  ansata,  hieroglyphice  ankh,  j — "life  eternal" — found 
in  that  temple  of  Serapis]  was  the  one  which  belongs  to  them ;  the 
gentiles  said,  that  it  was  something  common  to  Christ  and  to 
Serapis"272  —  i.e.  "  HaPI-HeSIEI  (Osiris- Apis)  great  God  who  resides 
in  Amenthi,  the  lord  living  forever;"  as  Serapis  is  addressed  in 
hundreds  of  inscriptions  now  at  Paris. 

These  researches  were  vigorously  pushed  for  about  four  years 
along  the  Meraphite  necropolis,  resulting,  as  will  be  seen  presently, 
in  an  immense  accession  of  antiquities,  from  the  earliest  Pharaonic 
to  the  latest  Soman  times — a  period  of  some  4000  years.  Through 
them,  the  age  of  the  colossal  sphinx  of  Geezeh  has  been  earned  back 
to  the  primeval  rVth  dynasty ;  and,  for  chronology,  a  collection  of 
funereal  tablets  (about  650  saved  out  of  some  1200  found),  now  in 
the  Louvre,  giving  the  genealogies  of  individuals  (one  I  saw  goes 
back,  fathers  and  sons,  about  19  generations),  often  with  the  dates 
of  kings'  reigns,  year,  month  and  day,  of  every  epoch,  will  enable 
archaeology  to  fill  a  thousand  gaps  in  the  time-measurement  of  old 


*>2  Letronne,  La  Croix  Ansee  (gypiienne  (Me'm.  de  l'Acad.  des  Inscrip.,  2d  part)  — 
"tirage  a  part,"  Paris,  1846;  pp.  24-26:  citing  textually,  Rufinus  II,  c.  26  and  29  — 
Sozomen,  Hist,  eccles.  VII,  15,  p.  725  B  —  and  Socrates,  V,  17,  p.  276,  A.  B.  Conf.  also, 
De  Potter,  Hisloire  du  Ohristianisme. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  .  491 

Egypt.  The  last  catalogue  of  the  Louvre  museum273  enumerates  but 
few  of  these  uncounted  treasures.  Science  must  wait  patiently  for 
their  co-ordination  by  their  discoverer,  when  France  publishes  his 
folio  Monuments.  Meanwhile,  as  De  Saulcy  says — "The  names  of 
a  dozen  new  Pharaohs  have  been  found;  and  the  400  principal 
steles,  that  are  now  deposited  in  the  Louvre,  are  like  400  pages  of  a 
book  written  3000  years  ago,  which  reveal  to  us  a  multitude  of  details, 
heretofore  unknown,  about  the  life  and  the  religion  of  ancient  Egypt. 
Furthermore,  art  itself  has  to  put  in  her  claims  for  a  share  in  the  rich 
booty  of  M.  Mariette ;  and  I  limit  myself  to  citing,  among  other 
monuments,  an  admirable  statue  of  a  sitting  Scribe,  dating  certainly 
4000  years  before  the  Christian  era,  and  which  is  a  chef-d' 'oeuvre  of 
the  plastic  art." 

This  Scribe  is  fac-simile-ed  in  our  frontispiece,  with  other  contem- 
poraneous associates  from  the  same  tomb  (Vth  dynasty)  in  plates 
LT  to  VIII  of  this  present  volume.  They  are  due  to  the  complaisance 
of  my  friends  MM.  Deveria  and  Salzmann  (author  of  those  unsur- 
passable jrfwtograplis  of  Palestine),  who,  with  the  sanction  of  MM.De 
Rouge  and  Mariette,  kindly  brought  their  instruments  to  revivify, 
at  the  Louvre,  the  specimens  first  offered  to  the  American  public  in 
this  work.  M.  Pulszky's  practised  eye  has  already  assigned  them  a 
proper  place  in  the  history  of  iconographic  art  (Chapter  II,  pp. 
109-116,  ante). 

But  Mariette  must  speak  for  himself.274 

"I  estimate,"  says  the  explorer,  "that  the  diggings  at  the  Sera- 
peum  of  Memphis  have  led  to  the  discovery  of  about  7000  monu- 
ments. 

"  But  all  these  monuments  are  not  relative  to  the  same  object,  that 
is  to  say  to  the  worship  of  the  God  adored  in  the  Serapeum.  Built 
in  a  necropolis  more  ancient  than  itself,  the  Serapeum  held  within 
its  enclosure  some  old  tombs  which  the  piety  of  Egyptians  had 
respected.  Nearly  all  its  walls  were,  besides,  formed  of  stones  bor- 
rowed from  edifices  already  demolished.  *  *  *  The  clearing  out  of 
the  Serapeum  has,  therefore,  really  had  for  result  the  discovery  of 
the  7000  monuments  already  mentioned.  But  the  monography  of 
Serapis  does  not  count  upon  more  than  about  3000  ; — a  very  respect- 
able cipher,  if  one  recollects  that  few  questions  of  antiquity  have 
ever  reached  us  under  the  escort  of  a  similar  number  of  original 
documents.  *  *  *  It  is  not,  then,  a  treatise  upon  Serapis  that  must 
be  required  from  the  little  essay  of  which  I  am  tracing  the  lines.    If 

273  Notice  Sommaire  (supra,  note  222). 

2'4  "Renseignements  sur  les  64  Apis  trouve's  dans  les  souterrains  du  Serapeum" — Bulletin 
Archeulogique  de  V Athenceum  Francais,  Paris,  May-Nov.  1855;   Articles  I  to  V. 


492  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

it  be  accorded  to  me  some  day  to  render  a  detailed  account  of  the 
operations  of  which  the  Serapeum  was  the  theatre,  I  will  endeavor 
to  show  and  to  define  the  Serapis  whom  the  classifying  and  interpre- 
tation of  the  texts  fonnd  in  the  temple  of  this  god  have  revealed  to 
us.  It  will  then  be  seen  what  Serapis  really  was.  It  will  be  seen 
how  Serapis  was  a  god  of  Egyptian  origin,  as  ancient  as  Apis,  seeing 
that  after  all  he  is  but  Apis  dead.  It  will  be  seen  how  the  Serapis 
of  the,.  Greeks  is  only  another  amalgamated  Grteco-Egyptian  god  ; 
and  how  these  two  divinities  have  lived  at  Memphis  in  two  distinct 
Serapeums,  in  each  other's  presence,  without  ever  being  confounded." 

"It  is  known  that  the  Serapeum  is  situate,  not  at  Memphis,  but 
in  the  burial-ground  of  Memphis  ;  and  that  this  temple  was  entirely 
built  for  the  tomb  of  Apis.  The  Serapeum  is  merely,  therefore, 
according  to  the  definition  of  Plutarch  and  of  Saint  Clemens- Alex- 
andrinus,  the  sepulchral  monument  of  Apis;  or  rather  the  Serapeum 
is  the  temple  of  Apis  dead,  who,  in  consequence,  must  be  distin- 
guished from  the  temple  of  Apis  living,  that  Herodotus  has  described, 
and  which  Psametichus  embellished  with  the  colossi  of  Osiris.  Apis 
had,  then,  properly  speaking,  two  temples ;  one  which  he  inhabited 
under  the  name  of  Apis  during  his  lifetime,  the  other  wherein  he 
reposed  after  his  death  under  the  name  of  Osorapis"  —  corrupted  by 
Greeks  and  Romans  into  Serapis. 

"  By  way  of  resume,  the  explanations  which  I  have  just  given  have 
already  had  for  result  to  show  us : — 

1st. — That  the  Serapeum  is  but  the  mausoleum  of  Apis ;  and  thus 
that  the  principal  god  of  the  Serapeum,  that  is  to  say,  Serapis,  is  but 
Apis  dead; 

2d.  —  That  there  had  been  at  Memphis  two  Serapeums;  one 
founded  by  Amenophis  HT.  \_Memnon — XVIIth  dynasty,  15th  cen- 
tury b.  c],  in  which  the  worship  of  the  god  of  the  ancient  Pharaohs 
preserved  itself  intact  down  to  the  Roman  emperors  [3d  century 
after  C]  :  the  other,  inaugurated  a  short  time  after  the  advent  of  the 
Greek  dynasty  at  Memphis,  and  in  which  the  Alexandrian  Serapis, 
result  of  a  bifurcation  [i.  e.  a  separation  of  religious  doctrine]  ope- 
rated under  Soter  I.  [about  B.  c.  310],  was  more  especially  adored ; 

3d. — That  the  clearing  out  of  the  only  one  of  these  temples  that 
has  been  explored,  has  produced  7000  monuments ;  among  which  the 
monography  of  Serapis  can  merely  claim  the  3000  objects  that,  by 
their  origin,  are  relative  to  this  god ; 

4th. — That  these  3000  objects  come  almost  all  from  the  tomb  of 
Apis  properly  so-called ;  and  hence  that  the  collection  of  the  Louvre 
possesses  a  funereal  and  Egyptian  character,  quite  different  from  that 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  493 

which  it  would  seem  a  collection,  drawn  entirely  out  of  the  temple 
of  Serapis,  ought  to  assume ; 

5th. — Finally,  that  this  tomb  had  been  violated  and  sacked ;  but 
that,  notwithstanding,  the  principal  divisions  of  the  monument  and 
the  nature  of  the  objects  gathered  from  it  have  permitted  the  proxi- 
mate re-construction  of  the  ancient  state  of  the  localities,  and  to 
establish,  in  a  manner  more  or  less  certain,  the  existence  of  a  mini- 
mum of  64  Apises" — that  is,  of  the  hieroglyphic  records,  and  some 
remains,  of  at  least  64  embalmed  bulls  dedicated  to,  and  once  buried 
in  this  sanctuary  of,  the  god  Apis. 

Mariette  then  proceeds  to  catalogue,  by  epoch  and  circumstances, 
the  succession  of  these  divine  animals,  in  the  most  detailed  and  in- 
teresting manner;  for  which  I  must  refer  to  the  luminous  papers 
themselves.  Space  confines  my  remarks  to  but  one  point  bearing  on 
chronology. 

Ancient  writers  cited  by  him275 — all,  however,  disciples  of  the  later 
Alexandria^schools — affirm  that  the  lifetime  of  the  sacred  bull  Apis 
was  restricted  to  25  years ;  at  the  expiration  of  which  the  quadruped 
deity  was  put  to  death  by  theocratic  law,  and  a  canonical  successor 
sought  for  and  installed.  This  custom  becoming  assimilated  to  the 
periodical  conjunction,  every  25  years,  of  the  solar  and  lunar 
motions,  on  the  same  day  and  at  the  same  celestial  points,  had  led  to 
modern  astronomical  suggestion  of  a  famous  cycle,  called  "the 
period  of  Apis."  Nevertheless,  the  two  ideas  are  proved  by  Mariette 
to  be  wholly  distinct ;  the  luni-solar  cycle  of  25  years  being  used  as 
far  back  as  Claudius  Ptolemy  (about  a.  d.  150)  in  his  tables ;  and  the 
supposed  application  of  this  cycle  to  Apis  being  derived  from  an  inci- 
dental and  misapprehended  remark  of  Plutarch,  that — "multiplied 
by  itself,  the  number  5  produces  a  square  equal  to  the  number  of  the 
Egyptian  letters  and  to  that  of  the  years  lived  by  Apis."276 

Did  the  Pharaonic  Egyptians,  in  limiting,  according  to  later  Gre- 
cian accounts,  the  life  of  Apis  to  25  years,  recognize  therein  the  luni- 
solar  cycle  in  vogue  among  astronomers  of  the  Alexandria-school  ? 
If  they  did,  a  most  useful  implement  is  at  once  found  by  which  to 
fix  an  infinitude  of  points  in  Egyptian  chronology.  Alas  !  The  fune- 
bral  tablets  demonstrate  that  some  Apises  died  a  natural  death  before 
the  25  years  were  completed,  and  that  others  lived  "  26  years,"  and 
"26  years  and  28  days,"  or  "25  years  and  17  days." 

"  Hence  the  argument  is  positive.     Our  Apises  die  at  all  ages ;  and 

2'5  Pliny,  viii.  46: — Solincs,  c.  32: — Ammianus  Marcel.,  sxii.  14,  7: — Plutarch,  Dt 

c.  56 ;  &c,  &o. 
z'6  See  also  the  authorities  in  Lepsius,   Tiber  den  Apiskreis,  Leipzig,  1853: — and   Chrono- 
jie  der  JEgypter,  i.  pp.  160-1. 


494  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

it  is  evident  that  if  each  end  of  a  luni-solar  cycle  of  25  years  Lad 
coincided  with  a  death  of  Apis,  the  monuments  would  have  already 
told  us  something  about  it.  On  the  contrary,  they  prove  to  us  that 
our  Apises  were  subject  to  the  common  law  at  the  will  of  destiny, 
without  caring  for  the  moon  or  its  position  in  the  sky  relative  to  the 
sun.     The  period  of  Apis  seems  to  me  definitively  buried." 

Thus,  day  by  day,  as  Egyptology  advances,  we  discover  that  many 
of  the  scientific,  theological,  and  philosophical  notions,  in  most  works 
of  modern  scholars  (as  yet  unaware  that  hieroglyphics  are  translated) 
attributed  to  the  simple  and  practical  denizens  of  the  Nile,  are  the 
posterior  creations  of  Grseco-Judaico-Roman  intellects  at  Alexandria 
— more  than  a  millennium  after  the  whole  economy  of  the  Egyptian 
mind  had  reached  its  maximum  of  development. 

Definite  cyclic  chronology — they  had  none  !  Their  long  papyric 
registries  of  reigns  [Turin  papyrus,  for  instance),  their  unnumbered 
petroglyphs  recording  dates,  are  marked  with  the  civil  year  (of  365 
days),  month,  and  day,  of  each  monarch's  reign ;  but  without  refe- 
rence to  any  historical  era,  or  to  any  astronomical  cycle.  "  Sothic 
periods,"  —  "Apis-periods,"  and  all  other  periods,  are  but  the  for- 
mulas through  which  Ptolemaic  Alexandrians  tried,  after  Manetho 
(b.  c.  260) — what  we  are  still  attempting,  2000  years  later — to  syste- 
matize for  Grecian  readers  the  chronology  of  a  primitive,  unsophisti- 
cated, people  who,  content  with  the  annual  registry  of  events  by  the 
reigns  of  their  kings — as  here  we  might  date  in  a  given  year  of  such 
a  President,  or  in  England  they  do  in  such  a  year  of  Victoria — were 
satisfied  with  this  world  as  they  found  it  created,  never  troubling 
their  brains  about  the  date  of  its  creation. 

Religious  dogmas — they  had  many ;  but  the  Funereal  Ritual™  or 
Booh  of  the  Bead,  now  that  we  know  its  fanciful  and  almost  childish 
contents,  is  more  interesting  to  the  Free-mason273  than  to  any  other 
reader, — except  as  phases  of  the  human  mind,  and  also  for  its  ines- 
timable value  to  the  philologist.  There  is  naught  in  it  about  cos- 
mogony ;  nor,  have  we  any  genuine  Egyptian  tradition  of  their  origin 
earlier  than  what  little  was  learned  by  Herodotus  in  the  5th  century 
b.  c. — viz:  that  Egyptians  reported  themselves  to  be  autochthones.™ 
Diodorus's  and  all  other  notions  on  the  subject  are  merely  echoes  of 
the  foreign  Alexandria-school. 

2'7  Bruosch,  Sa'i  an  Sinsin,  sive  Liber  metempsychosis  veterum  Egyptiorum  a  duabus  papyris 
funeribus  hieraticis,  Berolini,  4to,  1851 ;  pp.  1-2. 

2W  Lepsius,  Todtenbuch  du  ^Egypler,  Leipzig,  4to,  1842 :  —  In  speaking  of  acquaintance 
with  the  doctrines  of  the  Ritual,  I  would  especially  thank  Mr.  Birch  for  his  generosity  in 
furnishing  me,  long  ago,  with  an  autograph  synopsis  of  each  chapter  and  with  translations 
of  its  more  interesting  columns. 

sw  Herod. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  495 

Philosophy — the  very  word  is  Greek!™ 

It  might,  therefore,  be  wise  for  future  writers,  if  they  do  not  choose 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  correct  information  accessible  only  in 
works  of  the  living  Champollionists,  when  writing  about  the  world's 
history,  to  give  Egypt  no  place  in  it ;  lest,  by  relying  too  much  on 
the  absurd  anachronisms  of  Alexandrine  Greeks,  they  should  expose 
the  ignorance  of  two  parties. 

Meanwhile,  Egyptian  chronology  is  being  rebuilt  stone  by  stone, 
inscription  by  inscription,  epoch  by  epoch.  Already  the  structure, 
in  the  hands  of  Lepsius,  rears  its  head  with  Menes  at  3983  years 
before  our  vulgar  era ;  and  if  a  skeptic  should  desire  to  behold  the 
constructive  process  in  its  perfection,  I  would  refer  him  to  Mariette's 
restoration  of  the  XXJLLd,  or  Bubastite  dynasty™ — b.  c.  10th  and  9th 
centuries — for  the  nee  plus  ultra  of  archaeological  science  in  our  time. 

Having  now  laid  before  the  reader  a  sufficient  epitome  of  facts 
and  recent  authorities  to  support  those  presented  in  our  former  work, 
I  am  free  to  state  that,  in  common  with  my  contemporaries,  I  recog- 
nize no  chronology  whatever  anterior  to  the  Old  Empire,  or  the  pyra- 
midal period  of  Egypt ;  neither  can  I  find  solid  grounds  for  annual 
computation  anywhere  prior  to  about  2850  years  backwards  from  this 
year — the  LXXXth  of  the  Independence  of  these  United  States; 
nor,  for  centennary,  in  the  oldest  civilized  country, — the  lower  valley 
of  the  Nile — for  times  anterior  to  the  XVTIth  dynasty,  assumed  at 
about  the  16th-18th  centuries  B.  c. 

Under  this  view,  to  which  archseologists  with  other  scientific  men 
are  fast  approaching,  we  have  "ample  room  and  verge  enough,"  for 
carrying-human  antiquity  upon  earth  to  any  extent  that  geology  and 
natural  history  combine  to  permit.  The  former  science,  at  present, 
restricts  the  possibility  to  the  alluvials  and  the  diluvial  drift;  the 
latter,  perhaps,  warrants  our  taking  a  little  more  "  elbow  room." 
Either  boundary  will  suffice  for  the  continuation  of  our  inquiries  into 
tumular  remains  of  primordial  humanity,  and  their  relations  to  the 
ascending  series  of  man's  precursors,  the  fossil  and  humatile  simise. 

280  "Pythagoras  was  the  first  man  who  invented  that  word"  *IAOSO<t>OS,  philosopher ; 
Bentley,  Phalaris,  Dyce's  ed.,  London,  8to,  1836;  I,  p.  271. 

281  Bulletin  Archeologique  (supra,  note  274)  —  "tirage  a  part,"  Nov.  1855;  pp.  5-14,  and 
Tableau  genealogique. 

[A  recent  obliging  letter  from  Paris  informs  me  that  "  M.  Mariette  a  fait  paraitre  une 
dissertation  sur  la  mere  d'Apis,  dans  laquelle  il  e'tablit  que  les  Egyptiens  avaient  sur  la 
mere  d'Apis  des  idees  fort  analogues  a.  celles  que  les  Catholiques  ont  sur  la  Vierge  Marie, 
et  oil  il  retrouve  notamment  le  dogme  de  rimmaeulee  conception."  This  I  have  not  yet 
received.  When  I  do,  it  will  be  interesting  to  compare  it  with  the  masterly  Sermon  preche 
dans  le  Temple  de  VOratoire,  le  12  Novembre,  1854  (Paris),  on  "Un  Dogme  Nouveau  con- 
cernant  la  Vierge  Marie,"  by  Athanase  Coqtierel.] 


496  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 


PART    III. 


Have  fossil  human  bones  been  found  ?  The  chapter  entitled 
"  Geology  and  Palaeontology  in  connection  with  human  Origins," 
contributed  by  Dr.  Usher  to  our  preceding  work,  answers  affirma- 
tively; and  well-informed  critics282  have  conceded  that  his  argument 
is  sufficiently  powerful  to  arrest  unhesitating  acceptance  of  Cuvier's 
denial,  now  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  old.  The  subsequent 
discovery  of  fossil  simise,  equally  unforeseen  by  the  great  naturalist, 
in  Europe,  Asia,  and  America,  has  put  a  new  face  on  the  matter : 
"In  fact,"  wrote  Morton  in  1851,283  "I  consider  geology  to  have 
already  decided  tbis  question  in  the  affirmative."  So  does  Prof. 
Agassiz.284 

Now,  either  fossil  remains  of  man  have  been  discovered,  or  they 
have  not. 

Archaeology  no  longer  permitting  us  to  trammel  human  antiquity 
by  any  chronological  limits,  —  having,  to  speak  outright,  before  my 
eyes  neither  fear  of  an  imaginary  date  of  "  creation,"  nor  of  a  hypo- 
thetical "deluge"  —  I  approach  this  inquiry  with  indifference  as  to 
the  result,  so  long  as  errors  may  be  exploded,  or  truth  elicited:  and,  to 
begin,  it  strikes  me  that  here  again,  as  above  argued  in  regard  to 
"  species,"  much  ink  might  have  been  spared  by  previously  settling 
the  signification  of  the  term  "fossil."  I  know285  the  alleged  criteria 
by  which  really  fossilized  bones  are  determined ;  and  have  inspected, 
often,  palasontological  collections  of  all  epochas  in  Paris,  London, 
and  at  our  Philadelpbian  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences.  On  every 
side  I  read  and  hear  doubts  expressed  as  to  whether  fossil  man  exists; 
yet,  when  opening  standard  geological  works,286  I  encounter,  re- 
peatedly, "fossil  human  skeleton"  in  the  same  breath  with  "fossil 
monkeys;"  and  then  ascertain  elsewhere  (ubi  supra)  that  the  latter 

282  Paul  be  Remusat,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  1  Oct.  1854,  p.  205: — D'Eiohthal,  Bulletin 
de  la  Societe  de  Geographie,  Annie  1855,  Jan.  and  Feb.,  p.  59 : — Maury,  Athenaeum  Frangais, 
12  Aout,  1854;  p.  741 ;  Riqollot,  Me'moire  sur  des  Instruments  en  Silex,  &c,  Amiens,  8to, 
1854;  pp.  19,  20. 

283  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  326 — "Morton's  ined.  MSS.":  —  Hamilton  Smith,  Nat.  Hist, 
of  the  human  Species,  pp.  99-102. 

28*  Op.  cit.,  p.  352.  "5  Op.  cit.,  p.  346. 

286  Mantell,  Petrifactions  and  their  Teachings,  British  Museum,  London,  12mo,  1851 ;  pp. 
464,  483 ;— Ibid.,  Wonders  of  Geology,  London,  12mo,  6th  ed.,  1848;  I,  pp.  86-90,  258-9;— 
Ibid.,  Medals  of  Creation,  London,  12mo,  1844;  pp.  861-3:  —  Martin,  Natural  History  of 
Mammiferous  Animals,  Man  and  Monkeys,  London,  8vo,  1841 ;  pp.  332-6,  354-7.  Sir 
Charles  Ltell  (Principles  of  Geology,  London,  8th  ed.,  1850;  pp.  142,  734),  however,  makes 
clear  distinctions  between  "  Guadaloupe  skeletons"  and  "fossil  monkeys." 


THE     POL  YGENISTS.  497 

are  found  in  Europe  back  to  the  tertiary  deposits, — one  feels  inclined 
to  ask,  how  a  single  adjective  comes  to  designate  two  osseous  states 
denied  to  "be  identical?  "II  n'y  plus  que  les  Anglais,  ou  l'ecole  de 
Londres,"  says  Boue,287  "  qui  s'ecartent  souvent  du  langage  clas- 
sique.  Comme  on  juge  l'education  d'un  individu  par  son  parler,  de 
meme  on  peut  etre  tente  de  prendre  le  style  du  geologue  comme 
thermometre  de  son  savoir." 

It  is,  indeed,  through  popular  currency  of  a  word  which,  used 
exoterically  when  talking  with  theologers,  implies  that  man  is  recent, 
in  the  biblical  sense ;  or,  when  esoterically  employed  among  scientific 
men,  means  that  man  is  very  ancient  in  ethnological,  alluvial,  botani- 
cal, and  other  senses, — that  the  real  question  of  human  antiquity  upon 
earth  has  been  obfuscated. 

Thus,  every  one  knows  that  the  presence  of  "  animal  matter,  and 
all  their  phosphate  of  lime"  (Lyell)  in  the  Guadaloupe  skeletons  at 
the  British  Museum,  no  less  than  in  the  G-alerie  a"  Anthropologic  of  the 
Museum  at  Paris,  combine  with  other  data  to  invalidate  their  anti- 
quity ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  presence  of  animal  matter — even 
to  "the  marrow  itself — sometimes  preserved  in  the  state  of  a  fatty 
substance,  burning  with  a  light  flame"238 — does  not  the  more  bring 
the  Irish  fossil  elk  (Elaphus  hibernicus)  within  the  limits  of  chrono- 
logy, nor  make  the  human  body,  bones,  and  implements,  fouud  with 
this  extinct  quadruped,  the  less  ancient. 

As  a  contemporary289  with  mastodons,  mammoths,  and  carnivora 
of  the  caves  and  ossuaries  in  the  ascending  scale  of  time,  and  with 
man  in  the  descending,  this  Irish  fossil  stag  links  the  elder  and  the 
old  stages  of  the  mammiferous  series,  amid  which  mankind  possess 
a  place,  uncertain  as  to  epoch,  but  certain  as  to  fact.290 

JSTor  is  this  fossil  Hibernian  stag  (or  elk,  which,  Hamilton  Smith 
says,  lived  as  late  as  the  8th  century),  the  only  instance  of  the  extinc- 
tion of  "  genera  "  and  "  species  "  since  man  has  occupied  our  chiliad- 
times-transforming  planet.  I  refer  not  to  Elephas  primigenius,  or  to 
rhinoceros  tichorinus ;  neither  to  ursus  or  canis  speleeus,  nor  to  bos  pris- 
cus,  equus,  and  many  other  genera291  among  which  human  remains 
occur :  if  their  coetaneousness  is  recognized  by  some,  it  is  contested 
by  others ;  so  here  the  cases  may  be  left  open :  but  such  examples  as 

567  Voyage  Geolog.,  I,  p.  419: — Ainsworth,  Researches  in  Assyria,  &c,  London,  8vo,  1838; 
p.  12. 

288  Op.  cit.  : — Mantei.l's  Address  to  the  Archaeological  Institute  at  Oxford,  1850. 

289  Alfred  Matjry,  Des  Ossemens  Humains  el  des  Ouvrages  de  main  d'Hommes  enfouis  dans 
les  roches  et  les  couches  de  la  lerre,  pour  servir  &  eclairer  les  rapports  de  V  Archiologie  el  la  Geo- 
logic, Paris,  8vo,  1852;  pp.  34-40. 

290  See  what  Dr.  Meigs  has  quoted  from  a  late  paper  by  Mr.  Denny  (supra,  p.  289). 

291  Hamilton  Smith,  op.  cit.,  pp.  95-6. 

32 


498  THE     MOKOGEKISTS     AND 

by  the  most  rigorous  opponents  of  man's  antiquity — Elie  de  Beau- 
mont, Buckland,  Brogniart,  Lyell,  Owen,  and  other  illustrious  palae- 
ontologists—  are  accepted.  Since  Roman  days,  bos  longifrovs  no 
longer  roams  the  British  isles ;  even  if  bos  aurochs  may  yet  have 
escaped  the  yager's  bullet  in  Lithuanian  thickets.  Man  and  the 
moa  (dinornis  giganteus)  were  formerly  at  war  in  New  Zealand :  the 
dodo  vanished,  during  the  16th  century,  from  Tristan  d'Acunha ; 
leaving  but  a  skull  and  a  foot  (if  memory  serves)  to  authenticate  its 
portrait  in  the  Ashmolean  Museum  at  Oxford.  So  too  has  tl  e 
dronte  expired  at  the  Mauritius.  Of  the  cpinornis  we  know  not 
whether  living  natives  of  Madagascar — that  unaccountable  island  to 
which,  Commersan  (Bougainville's  naturalist)  happily  says,  "Nature 
seems  to  have  withdrawn,  as  to  a  sanctuary,  therein  to  work  upon 
other  models  than  those  which  she  had  mastered  elsewhere" — still 
feast  on  its  colossal  eggs.  And,  taking  again  our  oldest  historical 
country,  and  the  one  with  which  I  happen  to  be  somewhat  ac- 
quainted, where,  in  Egypt,  is  now  the  ibis  religiosa,202  of  yore  as  common 
as  Guinea-hens  with  us  ?  Who  but  an  unconquerable  botanist,  amid 
the  fens  of  Meuzaleh,  could  point  out  the  cyperus  papyrus ;  or  any 
where  along  the  Lower  Nile  discover  an  indigenous  faba  JEgypti- 
aca  ?  Yet  the  former  was  once  the  main  instrument  of  Pharaonic 
civilization ;  being  with  the  latter,  the  "primitive  nutriment  of  man," 
and  symbolizing  "the  first  origin  of  things."293  Six  hundred  years 
have  passed  since  Abd-el-Lateef  deplored  the  extinction  of  the  little 
clump  of  sacred  perseas  languishing  then  at  Shoobra-shabieh.  Where, 
before  his  day,  there  had  been  thousands,  now  curiosity  doubts  over 
but  one  sample — in  my  time,  withering  in  the  garden  of  the  Greek 
patriarch  at  Cairo.  Emblem  of  Thoth,  minister  of  Osiris,  guardian 
of  the  plummet  in  the  mystical  scales  of  Amenthi,  the  cynocephalus 
hamadryas,  if  still  an  unruly  denizen  of  Abyssinia,  Arabia,  and  Per- 
sia, no  more  steals  in  Egypt  the  sycamore  fig :  ^  hippopotami  have  fled 
up  to  Dongola ;  and  wary  crocodiles  are  not  shot  at  lower  down  than 
the  tomb  of  Moorad-bey,  last  of  the  brave,  at  Girge.  Like  the  wolf 
in  England,  or  his  dog  in  Erin,  one  genus  is  extinct ;  the  other  all  but 
so :  or  else,  as  within  the  territories  of  our  vast  Republic — compared 
to  which295  "the  domains  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg  are  but  a  patch 
on  the  earth's  surface"  —  the  native  rattlesnake  flees  before  the  im- 
ported hog,  the  bison  disappears  before  the  face  of  starving  Indians ; 

292  During  15  years  of  a  sportsman's  life  in  Egypt,  1  never  saw  one  alive.  My  old  friend 
Mr.  Harris  has  latterly  been  more  fortunate.  Cf.  Proceedings  of  the  Acad,  of  Nat.  Sciences, 
Philadelphia,  1850. 

293  Herodotus,  ii.  92 : — Hobus  Apollo,  i.  30 : — Gliddon,  Otia  JEgyptiaca,  p.  59. 

294  Rosellini,  Monumenii,  for  the  plates.  ■  ffl5  Webster  to  Hulzeman,  1851. 


THE     POLT6ENISTS.  499 

and  these  last  relies  of  succumbing  savagism  are  melting  away 
before  whiskey,  Bowie-knives,  and  Colt-revolvers;  so  parallely,  in 
many  branches — botanical,  zoological,  and  human — -of  Natural  His- 
tory, the  Author  of  Nature,  within  historical  recollection,  has  ever 
vindicated  her  eternal  and  relentless  law  of  "formation,  generation, 
dissolution."296 

The  tableau  of  osseous  and  industrial  vestiges  of  bimanes  met  with 
over  the  world,  supplied  by  Marcel  de  Serres,279  brings  down  fossil 
discovery  to  some  twenty  years  ago.  Much  of  what  has  been  done 
since,  particularly  in  America,  is  summed  up  by  our  collaborator 
Usher.  My  comments,  therefore,  may  be  restricted,  after  indicating 
fresher  materials,  to  these  and  some  few  amongst  the  elder  facts. 
Nomenclature,  as  above  shown,  being  passably  vague,  it  may  be 
well  to  come  to  an  understanding  with  the  reader  upon  the  senses 
of  some  words  in  our  terminology;  taking  M.  de  Serres  for  our 
guide.298 

"  These  (geological)  formations  having,  then,  been  wrought  by 
phenomena  of  an  order  totally  different  from  the  tertiary,  one  must 
necessarily  designate,  under  a  particular  name,  those  organic  remains 
found  in  them.  At  first,  it  had  been  proposed  to  give  to  these  debris 
the  name  of  sub-fossils,  so  as  thereby  to  indicate  their  newness,  rela- 
tively to  the  true  fossils.  Preferable  it  has,  notwithstanding,  seemed 
to  us,  to  designate  them  under  the  term  of  humatiles  z299  a  denomi- 
nation derived  from  the  Latin  word  humatus,  of  which  the  meaning 
is  nearly  the  same  as  that  of  fossilis ;  with  this  difference,  that  the 
former  expresses  the  idea  of  a  body  buried  in  an  accidental  rather 
than  in  a  natural  manner." 

It  must  be  allowed  that  the  last  sentence  somewhat  establishes 
" a  distinction  without  a  difference;"  but  I  presume  M.  Serres  to 


296  R.  Payne  Knight,  Inquiry  into  the  Symbolic  Language  of  Ancient  Art  and  Mythology, 
London,  8vo  ,  1818;  pp.  25,  107,  112,  180-1,  190,  &c. : — but  especially  in. his  Account  of  the 
Remains  of  the  Worship  of  Priapus,  lately  existing  at  lsermia,  Naples;  in  "two  Letters  to  Sir 
Jos.  Bankes  and  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton,  London,  4to.,  1786  ;  pp.  107-22. 

297  Essai  sur  Us  Cavernes  (supra,  note  132),  pp.  194-7. 

298  Op.  cit.,  p.  216:  — see  tables  illustrative  of  the  chemical  composition  of  humatile  and 
of  fossil  bones,  p.  93. 

299  Ogilvie,  Imperial  Dictionary,  English,  technological  and  scientific,  Glasgow,  4to,  1853 ; 
I.,  pp.  944-6:  —  (Humus,  soil)  "Humus,  a  term  synonymous  with  mould"  —  "Humate:  a 
compound  formed  by  the  union  of  humus  with  a  salifiable  basis.  The  humus  of  soils  is 
considered  to  unite  chiefly  with  ammonia,  forming  a  humate  of  that  substance."  —  p.  790, 
(Fossil,  fossilis,  from fodio,  fossus,  to  dig,)  "more  commonly  the  petrified  forms  of  plants 
and  animals,  which  occur  in  the  strata  that  compose  the  surface  of  our  globe"  —  II.,  p.  286, 
"Organic  remains."  I  have  not  met,  however,  with  the  form  "humatile"  in  works  written 
in  our  language. 


500  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

understand,  by  accidental,  disturbances  of  a  more  recent  and  local 
character,  such  as  earthquakes,  volcanoes,  ruptures  of  mountain 
barriers,  terrestrial  subsidences,  inundations  of  rivers,  &c. ;  and  by 
natural,  those  earlier  commotions,  cataclysms,  and  disruptions, 
known  in  geological  history.  Klee300  remarks  —  "One  would  con- 
ceive a  false  idea  of  fossils,  if  it  were  thought  that,  they  were 
always  remains  of  organic  bodies,  of  petrified  animals  or  vege- 
tables. A  fossil  is  oftenest  nothing  more  than  the  mineral  filling  the 
space  originally  occupied  by  an  organic  body,  vegetable  or  mineral,  of 
which  the  hard  parts  have  been  successively  penetrated  and  replaced  by 
mineral  substances.  Sometimes  this  substitution  is  made  with  such 
precision,  that  these  last  have  altogether  taken  the  structure  and 
form  of  the  parts  annihilated ;  which  has  given  to  the  mineral  a 
striking  resemblance  to  the  organic  body  destroyed." 

In  the  following  observations,  however,  by  the  term  "fossil"  are 
meant  only  such  bones  as  those  truly  fossilized ;  ex.  gr.,  those  of  the 
megalosaurus,  palceotherium,  megalonyx,  iguanodon,  &c,  &c.  By  "  bu- 
raatile,"  we  understand  bones  which,  not  having  been  subjected  to 
those  conditions  that  incommensurable  periods  of  geological  time 
have  alone  supplied,  are  necessarily  more  recent  —  containing  more 
or  less  animal  matter,  phosphate  of  lime,  and  so  forth;  according  to 
their  own  relative  ages,  various  ingredients,  and  several  gradations 
of  condition.  With  "petrifactions,"  of  course  we  have  nothing  to 
do  ;  because  they  are  of  all  epochs — fossil  as  well  as  humatile  —  and 
can  be  made  in  stalactite  caves,  such  as  those  of  Derbyshire  or  of 
Kentucky ;  or  manufactured  by  chemical  procedures  at  any  moment ; 
not  to  speak  of  the  lost  art  of  the  Florentine,  Segato.301 

With  this  definition,  let  the  query  be  repeated — Are  human  fossil 
remains  extant? 

I  have  not  yet  seen  Prof.  Agassiz's  Floridian  "jaws  and  portions 
of  a  foot;"  but,  so  far  as  literary  or  oral  instruction  extends,  I  can 
find  but  one  human  fossil.  Our  Philadelphia  Academy  of  Natural 
Sciences  is  its  possessor,  viz.,  Dr.  Dickeson's  "trouvaille"  of  the 
fragment  of  a  pelvis  at  Natchez.  Dr.  Usher302  pleads  for  its  authen- 
ticity as  a  fossil ;  which  condition  neither  human  art,  nor  any  process 
short  of  Nature's  geological  periods,  can,  'tis  said,  fabricate.  Sir 
Charles  Lyell,  acknowledging  the  bone  itself  to  be  a  fossil,  suggests 
that  this  same  os  innominatum  may  have  fallen  down,  from  a  recent 

300  Le  Deluge,  Considerations  geologiques  el  hisioriques  sur  les  derniers  cataclysms  du  Globe, 
Paris,  18mo.,  1847. 

301  Harlan's  translation  of  Gannal's  History  of  Embalming,  Philadelphia,  8vo.,  1840; 
p.  255. 

s»2  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  344,  349. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  501 

Indian  grave-yard,  among  anterior  fossilized  relics  of  extinct  genera 
discovered  with  it, —  some  of  which,  together  with  the  human  fossil, 
may  at  any  time  be  beheld  in  the  first  case  of  vertebrated  remains 
in  the  lower  room  of  the  museum  of  our  Academy.  "  Componere 
lites,"  iu  matters  of  science,  or  for  the  increase  of  knowledge,  wherein 
agitation  really  becomes  the  life  and  soul  of  progress,  is  a  thing  repug- 
nant to  my  instincts.  It  remains  (constat),  therefore,  that  there  is 
but  one  human  fossil  bone  in  the  world ;  and  that  the  causes  of  its 
fossilification,  not  its  fossilized  state,  are  disputed. 

This,  thus  far  unique,  instance  eliminated  from  the  argument — all 
human  remains  hitherto  discovered  in  alluvials,  caverns,  or  osseous 
strata,  are  humatilb  ;  and  so  are  Lund's  callithrix  primmvus  and 
protopithecus,  with  other  past  simiadse  found  in  South  America,  of 
which  the  genus  is  not  merely  identical  with  the  simise  platyrhinse 
belonging  to  this  continent,  and  wholly  wanting  elsewhere,  but, 
what  is  extremely  noteworthy,  their  "species"  is  very  nearly  the 
same303  as  that  of  each  of  their  succedaneums  skipping  about  Bra- 
zilian forests  at  the  present  hour.  There  is  a  solidarity,  a  homo- 
geneity here,  of  circumstances  between  monkeys  and  man,  not  to 
be  contemptuously  overlooked. 

Thus  much  established,  is  it,  I  would  ask,  through  mere  fortui- 
tous accident  that  the  Guadaloupe  human  skeletons,  equally  huma- 
tile  with  Lund's  American  simice,  should,  by  Mantell,304  be  assimi- 
lated to  the  Peruvian,  or  Carib,  indigenous  races  of  America,  seeing 
that  they  present  "  similar  craniological  development  ?"  or  that 
Moultrie,305  finds  in  the  skull  of  one  of  them,  brought  by  M.  L'He- 
minier  to  Charleston,  S.  C,  "  all  the  characteristics  which  mark 
the  American  race  in  general?"  Must  we  attribute,  as  Bunsen  has 
it,  to  "the  devil,  or  his  pulchinello,  accident,"306  a  coincidence,  that, 
in  the  same  deposits  with  humatile  American  simise,  Lund  should 
discover  skulls  of  humatile  American  man;307  "differing  in  nothing 
from  the  acknowledged  type  ?"  Or,  finally,  is  mere  chance  the 
cause  that,  on  this  continent,  by  naturalists  now  recognized  to  be 
the  oldest  in  age,  if  among  the  newest  in  name,  there  should  be 

303  i  i  Referable   to   four   modifications   of    the   existing   types   of  quadrumana"  —  says 
Mantell  (  Wonders  of  Geology,  ubi  supra,  I,  pp.  258-9). 
*»  Op.  cit.,  I,  pp.  86-90. 

305  Morton,  Physical  type  of  the  American  Indians. 

306  Philosophy  of  Universal  History,  (supra,  note  16)  I,  p.  4. 

307  Morton,  (Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  293,  350),  Proceedings  Acad.  Nat.  Soc,  1844:  — 
Lund  himself  (Leltre  A  M.Rafn,  28  Mars,  1844  —  apud  Klee,  Le  Deluge,  p.  328)  says  — 
"La  race  d'hommes  qui  a  vecu  dans  cette  partie  du  monde,  dans  son  antiquity  la  plus 
re'cule'e,  e"tait,  quant  a  son  type  general,  la  meme  qui  l'habitait  au  temps  de  sa  d<icouverU> 
par  les  Europeans." 


502  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

found,  in  addition  to  Mantell's  and  Moultrie's  humatile  Caribs  or 
Peruvians,  as  well  as  to  Lund's  humatile  Brazilian  crania,  1st  — 
Meigs's  humatile  South- American  human  hones;308  2d  —  Agassiz's 
Floridian  "  fossil  remains"  of  human  jaws  and  foot,  embedded  in  a 
conglomerate  at  least  "10,000  years"  old;309  and  3d — Dickeson's  fossil 
fragment  of  a  human  pelvis  ;  unique,  as  such,  in  the  world  ? 

It  is  true  that,  except  in  the  above  chronological  estimate  of  Prof. 
Agassiz  (which  falls  very  far  below  the  geological  realities  of  coral- 
formed  Florida),  the  antiquity  of  these  specimens  eludes  measure- 
ment; but,  the  continent  of  America  is  older  than  that  of  Europe, 
where  Chev.  Bunsen  (ubi  supra)  insists  upon  more  than  20,000  years 
since  the  advent  of  a  single  human  pair  upon  earth.  It  is,  likewise, 
infinitely  more  ancient  than  the  Nilotic  -alluvials  of  Egypt ;  where, 
as  before  shown,  our  monuments  go  back,  at  the  lowest  figures  (IUd 
dynasty),  some  53  centuries ;  without  yielding  any  chronological 
boundary  to  anterior  human  occupancy.  Hence,  upon  these  pre- 
mises, there  exists  no  arithmetical  limit  to  human  existence  in 
America ;  while  it  is  a  remarkable  feature  among  the  circumstances, 
that,  here,  humatile  men  and  humatile  simise  occupy  the  same 
ooetaneous  "platform"  —  the  former  always  Indians,  the  latter  ever 
platyrhinw ;  both  being,  as  to  their  "province  of  creation,"  Ameri- 
cans, and  American  only  —  neither  types  having  yet  turned  up  else- 
where. And,  in  this  comparison  of  simple  facts,  nothing  has' been 
said  about  the  possible  antiquity  of  the  "mounds  of  the  West;31" 
nor  in  respect  to  those  antique  monuments,  concerning  which  the- 
same  qualified  explorer  is  clearing  away  mystifications,  in  Central 
America.  Being  modern,  in  comparison  with  palsBontological  sub- 
jects, the  latter  may  be  touched  upon  in  a  subsequent  place. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  antiquarian  state  of  matters  on  the  cis- At- 
lantic side.  As  successor  in  various  geological  phenomena,  Europe 
beckons  for  some  trans- Atlantic  inquiries. 

Pictet,311  after  giviug  a  succinct  account  of  researches  upon  fossil- 
ized human  bones,  concludes : 

"1st.  Man  did  not  establish  himself  in  Europe  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  diluvian  epoch,  &c.  *  *  * 

"  2d.  Some  migrations  probably  took  place  during  the  course  of 
this  diluvian  period.    The  first  men  who  penetrated  into  Europe  per- 

308  Now  in  the  Acad.  Nat.  Soc.  —  Cf.  Meigs,  Account  of  some  human  bones,  &c.  —  Trans. 
Amer.  Philos.  Soc,  Philadelphia,  1830;  III,  pp.  286-91. 

309  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  352. 

310  Sqdieb,  Ancient  Monuments  of  the  Mississippi  Valley ;  1848,  4to,  pp.  304—306  : Types 

of  Mankind,  pp.  287-8. 

311  Traite  de  PaUontologie,  Paris,  8yo,  2d  edition,  1853 ;  pp.  145-54,  154. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  503 

baps  still  saw  the  cavern-bears,  tbe  elepbants,  and  tbe  contempora- 
neous (animal)  population.  Some  among  tbem  were  victims  of  tbe 
same  inundations." 

Ten  years  of  reflection  upon  newer  evidences  bad  led  this  judi- 
cious palaeontologist  to  consider  the  coetaneousness  of  mankind,  in 
Europe,  with  some  extinct  genera  of  mammifers  (ursus  spelseus,  &c), 
less  improbable  than  when  he  first  published  in  1844. 

"  Nevertheless,"  with  Maury,312  "  let  us  not  hasten  to  conclude. 
The  study  of  ethnology  tends  to  make  us  think  that,  at  first,  the 
human  race  was  very  sparsely  sown  upon  the  globe.  Its  numerical 
strength  has  not  ceased  to  increase  from  the  most  ancient  historical 
times ;  whilst,  for  many  animal  races,  the  progression  has  been  in- 
verse. At  the  time  when  civilization  was  yet  unborn,  when,  con- 
strained to  live  by  the  chase  and  by  fishing,  man  wandered  as  does 
still  the  North  American  Indian,  or  the  indigenous  native  of  Aus- 
tralia, a  thousand  destructive  causes  tended  towards  his  destruction, 
and  tbe  difficulty  of  subsisting  rendered  increase  of  population  very 
slow.  [The  great  development  of  population  begins  but  with  the 
domestication  of  herbivorous  animals313  and  the  culture  of  cereals.] 
If  the  first  infancy  of  humanity,  which  was  of  very  many  thousands 
of  years,  corresponds  to  the  tertiary  period,  there  can  then  have  ex- 
isted but  a  very  restricted  number  of  tribes,  spread  over  perhaps  those 
parts  of  Asia  which  the  geologist  has  not  sufficiently  explored.  *  *  * 
Let  us  here  remember  that  geologists  comprise,  under  the  name  of 
tertiary,  all  tbe  layers  (couches)  which  have  been  deposited  since  the 
last  secondary  formation,  that  of  the  chalk.  The  tertiary  systems 
serve,  in  consequence,  as  points  of  junction  between  tbe  present 
animal  kingdom  and  the  animal  kingdom  past.  For,  the  most 
ancient  eocene  deposits  contain  remains  but  of  a  little  number  of 
secondary  species,  and  these  species  comprise  a  great  number  of 
genera  still  existing,  associated  with  particular  types." 

In  confirmation  of  which  we  may  refer  to  M.  de  Serres's  remark,314 
that  our  domestic  animals  scarcely  exist  at  all  in  tertiary  deposits, 
although  they  abound  in  the  later  cave  and  diluvial ;  whereiu,  being 
found  with  human  remains,  it  seems  probable  that  man  bad  already 
reduced  some  of  them  to  domesticity.  So,  again,  in  the  caverns  of 
Gard,  there  are  two  distinct  epochs  of  humatile  man ;  first,  the  lower 

812  Op.  cil.  (supra,  note  289),  pp.  42,  40:  —  Leonhard  (apud  Klee,  Deluge,  pp.  323-6), 
sustains  the  coetaneousness  of  man  with  extinct  genera  of  animals  in  European  caverns, 
■with  several  examples. 

313  See  also  my  remarks  on  the  evidences  of  early  domestication  of  Egyptian  animals,  in 
Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  413-14. 

»«  Op.  cit.  (supra,  note  132),  pp.  61-2,  149. 


504  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

stratum,  when,  he  appears  to  have  been  a  comrade  of  the  extinct 
ursus  spelseus ;  and,  subsequently,  the  upper,  when  he  was  contempo- 
rary with  present  living  genera. 

We  come  now  to  fresh  corroborations  of  Boucher  de  Perthes's  dis- 
coveries of  human  industrial  remains  in  French  diluvial  drift,  cited 
by  Usher.315  They  were  considered  sufficiently  important  by  the 
Academie  des  Sciences  to  warrant  Dr.  Rigollot' s  nomination  as  corres- 
pondent of  the  Institute.  Unhappily,  this  took  place  on  the  4th  of 
January,  1855,  the  day  of  his  demise  :  but  his  work  survives.316  In 
company  with  M.  Buteux,  Member  of  the  French  Geological  Society, 
and  M.  E.  Hebert,  Professor  of  Geology  at  the  superior  normal 
school  of  Paris,  Dr.  Rigollot  explored  the  new  excavations  at  St. 
Acheul  and  St.  Roch;- — the  former  contributing  a  "Note  sur  les  ter- 
rains au  sud  d' Amiens,"  wherein  he  says — "The  banks  of  silex  and 
of  soil  which  cover  them  [these  remains]  are  considered  as  diluvian 
by  nearly  all  geologists;  but,  according  to  eminent  savans,  the  authors 
of  the  geological  map  of  France,  they  form  part  of  medium  or  upper 
tertiary  lands."317 

"Thus  it  is  well  established,"  adds  Rigollot,318  " and  I  repeat  it, 
the  objects  which  we  are  going  to  describe,  are  found  neither  in  the 
argilo-sandy  mud  (Union),  or  brick-earth  that  forms  the  upper 
stratum ;  nor  in  the  intermediary  beds  of  clay  more  or  less  pure,  of 
sands  and  small  pebbles,  of  which  a  precise  notion  may  be  had  from 
the  detailed  sections  joined  to  this  memoir;  but  they  are  met  with, 
exclusively,  in  the  true  diluvium;  that  is  to  say,  in  the  deposit  which 
contains  the  remains  of  animal  species  of  the  epoch  that  immedi- 
ately preceded  the  cataclysm  through  which  they  were  destroyed. 
There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  in  this  respect."  These  organic 
remains  consist  of  succinea  amphibia,  helix  rotundata,  elephas  primige- 
nius,  rhinoceros  tichorinus,  cervus  somonensis,  bos  priscus,  equus  (smaller 
than  the  common  horse),  catillus  Cuvieri,  and  cardium  hippopeum. 
Among  these,  some  400  industrial  relics  were  found,  during  six 
months — in  majority  of  silex,  wrought  in  the  same  style  with  singu- 
lar skill  —  some  apparently  hatchets,  others  poniards,  knives,  trian- 
gular cones ;  besides  little  perforated  globes,  seemingly  beads  for 
necklaces  and  bracelets,  generally  of  calcareous  stone,  rarely  of  flint. 
Finally,  these  vestiges  of  primordial  humanity  were  unaccompanied 
by  any  remains  of  pottery,  or  other  manufactures  of  Gaulish  later 
times  and  art. 

315  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  353-72. 

316  Rigollot,  Memoire  sur  des  Instruments  en  Silex  trouves  a  St.  Acheul,  pris  (P  Amiens,  et 
conside'res  sous  les  rapports  geologique  et  archeologique,  Amiens,  8vo.,  1854;  with  7  plates. 

317  Op.  cit.,  pp.  32-3.  318  Op.  cit.,  p.  14,  and  passim. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  505 

Until  such,  well-attested  facts  be  overthrown  (how,  it  yet  cannot 
be  conceived),  science  must  accept  the  existence  of  mankind  in  Eu- 
rope during  ages  anterior  to  that  cataclysm  which  rolled  reliquiae  of 
their  handicraft,  together  with  bones  of  now-extinct  genera,  amidst 
the  general  "tohu  ve  bohu  "  of  French  diluvial  drift. 

.Of  what  race  were  the  men319  whose  manufactures  were  thus  de- 
stroyed ? 

Certainly  not  Caribs,  Peruvians,  or  Brazilians,  we  might  answer  a 
priori.  The  humatile  vestiges  of  such  belong  exclusively  to  the 
American  continent ;  together  with  platyrhine  simise  of  their  com- 
mon zoological  province.  In  the  tertiary  formations  of  Europe  only 
fossil  catarrhine  monkeys  are  found ;  of  which,  later  species,  now 
living,  have  receded  into  Asia  and  Africa.  It  would  have  been  a 
violation  of  the  usual  homogeneity,  well  established,320  between  ex- 
tinct genera  and  those  now  alive  upon  each  continent,  were  we  to 
find  types  of  humatile  man  incompatible,  in  craniological  organism, 
with  the  existence  of  quadrumana  in  their  midst.  That  is  to  say, 
monkeys  in  Asia  and  Africa  now  reside  within  the  same  zones  (See 
Chart  of  Monkeys  further  on)  as  the  lower  indigenous  races  of  man- 
kind,—negroes,  Hottentots,  Audamanes,  and  various  inferior  Hindos- 
tanic  and  Malayan  grades :  and  one  might  reason  (a  priori  always) 
that,  in  primordial  Europe,  as  was  the  case  in  primordial  America, 
and  as  are  the  analogous  conditions  of  present  Africa  and  Asia,  fos- 
sil remains  of  quadrumana  should,  in  some  degree,  harmonize  with 
a  lower  type  of  humatile  bimanes  than  those  now  living  there,  since 
their  precursors,  the  monkeys,  have  abandoned  the  European  conti- 
nent. 

My  valued  friend  Mr.  Kenneth  R.  H.  Mackenzie  (translator  of 
Lepsius's  Letters  from  Egypt,  and  author  of  many  works),  to  whose 
extensive  range  of  literary  knowledge  I  have  been  often  indebted  for 
information,  read  me  some  passages  of  a  late  German  work.321 
Among  them  is  this  remark  —  "In  1833,  there  were  actually  found 
in  the  caverns  of  Engis  and  Engihoul,  near  Liege  (Luttich),  in  the 
limestone  rock,  even  human  bones  and  crania,  which  indeed  belonged 
to  the  negro  race." 

Supposing  no  exaggeration,  or  error,  in  this  strange  circumstance, 
it  would  be  analogous  to  the  now-altered  geographical  distribution 

319  Observe  the  language  of  Prof.  Agassiz  (svpra,  "  Prefatory  Remarks"). 

320  Cf.  the  remarks  of  De  Strzelecki   (Phys.  Description  of  N.  S.  Wales  and  Van  Diemen's 
Land,  1845)  on-  the  organic  remains  of  New  Holland,  or  Australia,  yielding  only  fossils  • 
of  Marsupials,  and  other  animals  peculiar  to  that  zoological  province. 

321  Ethnologic,  Anthropologic,  und  Staals-Philosophie ;  Ester  thiel,  "  Anthropognosie,"  Mar- 
burg. 1851 ;  p.  40: — referring  to  Schmerling's  Recherches  for  authority. 


506  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

of  negro-races  and  the  monkey-tribes ;  neither  of  which  have  inha- 
bited Europe  ■  since  her  history  dawns,  but  both  being  now-a-days 
fellow-residents,  from  incalculable  ages,  in  Africa. 

That  the  human  crania  referred  to  must  offer  some  singularly 
prognathous  features,  is  evident  from  the  following  comments  of 
Marcel  de  Serres : 322 

"  The  (human)  heads  discovered  in  divers  localities  of  Germany 
(in  caves,  or  in  ancient  diluvial  deposits)  have  nothing  in  common 
with  those  of  the  present  inhabitants  of  this  country.  Their  con- 
formation is  remarkable,  in  that  it  offers  a  considerable  flattening 
of  the  forehead,  similar  to  that  which  exists  among  all  savages  who 
have  adopted  the  custom  of  compressing  this  part  of  the  head. 
Thus,  certain  of  these  skulls,  and  for  instance  those  found  in  the 
environs  of  Baden  in  Austria,  presented  strong  analogies  with  those 
of  African  or  negro  races ;  at  the  same  time  that  those  from  the 
banks  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube  offered  some  great  resemblances 
with  the  crania  of  Caribs  or  with  those  of  the  ancient  inhabitants 
of  Chili  and  Peru."  Those  at  Liege  "  approach  the  Ethiopian  type. 
It  suffices,  in  order  to  convince  one's  self  of  this,  to  remark  the  frontal 
region  of  their  cranium,  which  is  triangular,  and  not  semi-circular 
as  it  is  in  the  Caucasian  race.  Thus,  according  to  these  facts,  the 
transportation  of  the  numerous  debris  of  animals  observed  in  these 
subterranean  cavities,  must  have  been  contemporaneous  with  the 
existence  of  this  principal  variety  of  mankind,  which  had  not  before 
been  encountered  anywhere  at  the  humatile  stage." 

"  These  events  [the  filling  up  of  caverns  with  remains  of  extinct 
and  living  genera]  are  so  recent,  that,  according  to  the  observations 
of  M.  Schmerling,  one  meets,  in  the  caves  of  Belgium,  with  human 
remains  of  the  Ethiopian  race,  mixed  and  confounded  with  debris  of 
animals  whose  races  seem  to  be  altogether  lost.  (This  observation 
confirms,  otherwise,  that  made  by  M.  Boue,  in  the  environs  of  Ba- 
den, in  Austria.  This  naturalist  there  discovered,  in  the  diluvial 
deposits,  human  crania  which  offered  the  greatest  analogies  with 
those  of  African  or  negro  races).  Thus,  at  the  epoch  of  the  filling 
up  of  these  caverns,  not  only  did  man  exist,  but  some  great  varieties 
of  the  human  species  must  already  have  been  produced. 

"Perhaps  those  who  reject  the  unity  of  the  human  species  may 
wish  to  invoke  this  fact  in  favor  of  their  system ;  because  it  seems  to 
prove  that  the  different  races  of  our  species  remount  to  the  very  high- 
est antiquity.  But,  whilst  admitting  this  conclusion  to  be  exact,  one 
must  not  leave  out  of  sight  that  the  question  of  the  unity  of  the 

»22  Op.  cit.,  (supra,  note  132)  p.  223. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  507 

human  genus  depends,  before  all,  upon  the  sense  that  is  attached  to 
the  word  species." 

The  latest  account  of  verifications  is  that  of  M.  Victor  Motschoul- 
sky,32;)  who  visited  Liege,  where,  at  the  University,  Prof.  Spring 
showed  him  these  human  pakeontological  relics,  described  previously 
by  Schmerling.  They  had  been  discovered  in  the  caves  of  Gouflbn- 
taines  and  of  Chauquiere,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Liege  and  Angers. 

"  They  are  composed  of  different  pieces  of  the  skull,  of  teeth  and 
hands  of  man  mingled  with  remains  of  the  ursus  spelseus,  some 
pieces  of  hyena,  of  large  felis,  of  stag,  horse,  &c.  The  pieces  of  human 
skull  show  that  the  forehead  was  very  short  and  much  inclined ; 
which,  according  to  Gall's  phrenology,  would  make  one  suppose  an 
individual  and  a  race  such  as  middle  Europe  never  had,  at  least  since 
historical  times.  On  this  occasion,  M.  Spring  observed  to  me  that 
the  discovery  of  Schmerling  was  not  isolated ;  and  that  subsequently, 
he  himself  had  found  many  more  analogous  pieces  in  a  cavern  situ- 
ate between  ISTamur  and  Dijon.  This  cave  is  called  le  trou  Chauvau, 
and  is  found  at  200  feet  above  the  surface  of  the  water  of  the  Meuse, 
in  calcareous  rock.  The  bottom  presents  an  enormous  heap  of  bones 
of  large  ruminants,  carnivora,  and  of  man,  in  a  limestone  softened 
by  infiltration.  In  the  earth,  all  these  objects  are  soft  and  extremely 
friable ;  they  are  compressible  and  break  very  easily ;  but  exposed  to 
the  air  they  soon  harden,  and  present  a  complete  calcareous  petrifac- 
tion. It  seems  that  this  cavern  contains  a  great  number ;  and  with 
minute  and  regular  researches,  one  would  certainly  get  out  of  it 
human  crania  and  perfect  skeletons.  The  samples  which  I  saw,  at 
M.  Spring's,  present  two  upper  parts  of  a  skull,  jaws  with  teeth,  and 
several  bones  of  hands  and  legs.  One  of  these  skulls,  according  to 
the  opinion  of  this  savant,  seems  to  have  belonged  to  a  child  of  seven 
years,  and  the  other  to  one  of  twelve.  The  form  of  these  crania 
approaches  more  that  of  negroes,  and  not  at  all  to  present  European 
races.  The  lower  jaw  is  squarer  and  broader,  the  inferior  edge  more 
rounded,  and  not  salient  as  in  our  European  races:  the  occipital  bone 
is  higher ;  the  lateral  sides  of  the  skull  much  more  flattened  and  more 
compressed  than  in  any  of  those  of  our  living  races.  In  the  same 
palseontological  formation  are  found  a  flint  hatchet  and  a  few  arrow- 
heads," &c. 

The  latter  circumstance,  but  for  subsequent  discoveries  of  Boucher, 
Bigollot,  and  the  Abbeville-geologists,  might  have  been  adduced  in 
order  to  lessen  the  antiquity  of  these  humatile  remains ;  but  being 

323  Exlraii  da  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  Imperiale  des  Naturalises  de  Moscou,  Tome  xxiv.  1851 ; — 
Letter  to  the  Secretary,  dated  "Liege,  ce  16  Fevrier,  1851 ;"  pp.  32-4.  I  owe  communi- 
cation of  this  pamphlet  to  my  friend  Dr.  John  Leconte,  of  our  Acad.  Nat.  Sci.  Philada. 


508  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

also  exhumed  from  the  diluvial  drift,  rude  flint  instruments  are  no 
longer  criteria  for  depressing  the  age  of  bones  found  with  them. 
Primordial  man  was  everywhere  a  hunter:  his  teeth  and  stomach 
are  those  of  an  omnivorous  genus :  his  instincts  still  continue  to  be 
essentially  bellicose. 

This  is  confirmed,  whilst  I  am  writing,  by  the  following  interest- 
ing account  of  proceedings  among  men  of  science  in  England — which 
is  inserted  as  received : 

"A  paper  has  also  been  read,  in  this  section,  by  Mr.  Vivian,  of 
Torquay,  on  "the  earliest  traces  of  human  remains  in  Kent's  Cavern, 
especially  flint-knives  and  arrow-heads,  beneath  the  stalagmitic 
floor."  The  peculiar  interest  of  this  subject  consisted  in  its  being 
the  link  between  geology  and  antiquities;  and  the  certainty  afforded, 
by  the  condition  in  which  the  remains  are  found,  of  their  relative 
age, — the  successive  deposits  being  sealed  up  in  situ  by  the  droppings 
of  carbonate  of  lime,  which  assume  the  form  of  stalagmite.  The 
sources  from  which  the  statements  in  the  paper  were  obtained,  were 
principally  the  original  manuscript  memoir  of  the  late  Rev.  J. 
M'Enery,  F.  G.  S.,  which  is  deplored  by  Professor  Owen,  in  his 
Fossil  Mammalia,  and  by  other  writers,  as  lost  to  science;  but  which  has 
been  recovered  by  Mr.  Vivian,  and  was  produced  before  the  section : 
also  the  report  of  the  sub-committee  of  the  Torquay  Natural  Society, 
and  his  own  researches. 

"We  have  not  space  for  the  interesting  statements  contained  in 
the  paper,  or  the  extracts  which  were  read  from  the  manuscript, 
beyond  the  following  brief  summary  of  Mr.  Vivian's  conclusions, 
which  were  mainly  in  accordance  with  those  of  Mr.  M'Enery.  The 
cavern  is  situated  beneath  a  hill,  about  a  mile  from  Torquay  and 
Babbecombe,  extending  to  a  circuit  of  about  700  yards.  It  was  first 
occupied  by  the  bear  (ursus  spelseus)  and  extinct  hyena,  the  remains 
of  which,  the  bones  of  elephants,  rhinoceros,  deer,  &c,  upon  which 
they  preyed,  were  strewn  upon  the  rocky  floor.  By  some  violent 
and  transitory  convulsion,  a  vast  amount  of  the  soil  of  the  surround- 
ing country  was  injected  into  the  cavern,  carrying  with  it  the  bones, 
and  burying  them  in  its  inmost  recesses.  Immediately  upon  its 
subsidence,  the  cavern  appears  to  have  been  occupied  by  human 
inhabitants,  whose  rude  flint  instruments  are  found  upon  the  mud 
beneath  the  stalagmite.  A  period  then  succeeded,  during  which  the 
cavern  was  not  inhabited  until  about  half  of  the  floor  was  deposited, 
when  a  streak  containing  burnt  wood  and  the  bones  of  the  wild  boar 
and  badger  was  deposited;  and  again  the  cave  was  unoccupied,  either 
by  men  or  animals, — the  remaining  portion  of  the  stalagmite  being, 
both  above  and  below,  pure  and  unstained  by  soil  or  any  foreign 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  509 

matter.  Above  the  floor  have  been  found  remains  of  Celtic,  early 
British  and  Roman  remains,  together  with  those  of  more  modern 
date.  Among  the  inscriptions  is  one  of  interest  as  connected  with 
the  landing  of  William  III.  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  bay:  'W. 
Hodges,  of  Ireland,  1688.' 

"  In  the  discussion  which  followed,  and  in  which  Sir  Henry  Eaw- 
linson,  the  Secretary  of  the  Ethnological  Society,  and  others,  took 
part,  the  position  of  the  flints  beneath  the  stalagmite  seemed  to  be 
admitted,  although  contrary  to  the  generally  received  opinion  of  the 
most  eminent  geologists, — thus  carrying  back  the  first  occupation 
of  Devon  to  very  high  antiquity,  but  not  such  as  to  be  at  variance  with 
Scriptural  chronology :  [!]  the  deposit  of  stalagmite  being  shown  to 
have  been  much  more  rapid  at  those  periods  when  the  cavern  was  not 
inhabited,  by  the  greater  discharge  of  carbonic  acid  gas.  Without 
attempting  to  affix  with  any  certainty  more  than  a  relative  date  to 
these  several  points,  or  forming  a  Scriptural  interpretation  upon 
natural  phenomena,  which,  as  Bacon  remarked,  too  often  produces 
merely  a  false  religion  and  a  fantastic  philosophy,  Mr.  Vivian  sug- 
gested that  there  was  reason  for  believing  that  the  introduction  of 
the  mud  was  occasioned,  not  by  the  comparatively  tranquil  Mosaic 
Deluge,  which  spared  the  olive  and  allowed  the  ark  to  float  without 
miraculous  interposition,  but  by  the  greater  convulsion  alluded  to  in 
the  first  chapter  [I  presume  this  to  be  a  misprint,  for  no  Hebraist 
can  find  such  coincidence  in  the  Text]  of  Genesis,  which  destroyed 
the  pre-existing  races  of  animals — most  of  those  in  this  cavern  being 
of  extinct  species — and  prepared  the  earth  for  man  and  his  contem- 
poraries."324 

There  is  yet  another  rather  recent  rumor  of  certain  discoveries, 
reported  by  Professor  Karnat,  of  human  skulls  mingled  with  osseous 
vestiges  of  the  mammoth  period,325  in  the  Suabian  Alps ;  but  I  have 
not  been  able  to  obtain  details.  Nevertheless,  whilst  the  antiquity 
of  man  in  Europe  begins  to  be  borne  out  on  all  sides,  it  is  to  be 
regretted  that  these  so-called  negroid  crania  do  not  yet  appear  to 
have  been  scrutinized  by  special  cranioscopists ;  who  would  proba- 
bly detect,  in  their  prognathous  conformation,  not  a  negro  type,  but 
that  of  some  races  of  man  of  lower  intellectual  grade  than  occupy 
Europe  at  this  day.  In  the  scale  of  progression,  monkeys  should, 
in  Europe  also,  have  been  precursors  (as  they  were  in  America)  of 
inferior  races  of  mankind ;  such  as  those  we  still  encounter  being 
confined  within  the  same  tropical  zones  now-a-days  co-inhabited 
by  the  simiadce. 

324  London  "Times,"  Aug.  12,  1858 — Brit.  Assoc.  Adv.  Science,  Cheltenham,  Aug.  9. 
825  Proceedings  of  the  German  Scientific  A  ssocialion ;'  held  at  Tubingen,  1854. 


510  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

It  was  not,  however,  from  ratiocination  upon  such  data,  which 
are  later  sequences  of  palseontological  revelations  obtained  only 
since  1837,  that  the  greatest  champion  of  the  "unity  of  the  human 
species"  (at  whose  equivocal  dictum  trembling  orthodoxy  clutches 
like  sinking  mariners  at  their  last  plank)  draws  his  conclusion  that 
our  first  parents  were  of  the  negro  type ;  indeed,  logically  speaking, 
that  "Adam  and  Eve"  must  have  appertained  to  that  same  "bevy 
of  black  angels  (caught)  as  they  were  winging  their  way  to  some 
island  of  purity  and  bliss  here  upon  earth,  and  reduced  from  their 
heavenly  state,  by  the  most  diabolical  cruelties  and  oppressions,  to 
one  of  degradation,  misery,  and  servitude."326 

In  1813,  Dr.  Prichard  wrote:327  "If  there  be  any  truth  in  the 
above  remarks,  it  must  be  concluded  that  the  process  of  Nature  in 
the  human  species  is  the  transmutation  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
negro  into  those  of  the  European,  or  the  evolution  of  white  varieties 
in  black  races  of  men.  *  *  *  This  leads  us  to  the  inference  that  the 
primitive  stock  of  men  were  negroes,  which  has  every  appearance 
of  truth.  *  *  *  On  the  whole,  there  are  reasons  which  lead  us  to 
adopt  the  conclusion  that  the  primitive  stock  of  men  were  probably 
negroes ;  and  I  know  of  no  argument  to  be  set  on  the  other  side." 

With  regard  to  Prichard's  now-forgotten  view,  that  "  the  process 
of  Nature"  is  the  "transmutation"  of  species,  nothing  can  be  less 
historically  founded.  To  the  facts  established  in  our  former  work,328 
and  others  in  this  essay,  I  would  here  add  the  authority  of  the  ablest 
polygenist,  no  less  than  one  among  eminent  comparative  anato- 
mists of  the  Doctor's  time,  viz.,  Desmoulins : 329  "  The  species  of  the 
same  genus,  and  with  stronger  reason  those  of  different  genera,  are 
therefore  unalterable  throughout  all  those  influences  which  hereto- 
fore were  regarded  as  the  ever-producing  and  ever-altering  causes 
of  them.  It  is,  then,  the  permanence  of  type,  under  contrary 
influences,  which  constitutes  the  species.  That  which  is  called 
'varieties'  bears  only  upon  differences  of  size  and  color:  they  are 
but  the  accidental  subdivisions  of  the  species."  Confirming  it  by  a 
later  authority,  Courtet  de  ITsle,330  who  after  citing,  like  Morton, 

826  Bledsoe,  Liberty  and  Slavery,  Philadelphia,  12mo,  1S56;  p.  54.  Dr.  Livingstone, 
however,  according  to  newspaper  report,  has  since  found  such  angelic  negroes  in  the  centre 
of  Africa.     "Nous  verrons." 

327  Researches  into  the  Physical  History  of  Man,  London,  8vo,  1st  ed.,  1813;  pp.  233-9. 
This  curious  chapter  is  expunged  from  all  later  editions  of  his  works ;  nor  did  the  learned 
Doctor  ever  refer,  in  them,  to  his  early  theory ! 

s*s  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  56,  81,  84,  465. 

329  Jlistoire  Naturelle  des  Races  Humaines  du  nord-est  de  VEurope,  de  I'Asie  boreale,  el  de 
VAfrique  australe,  Paris,  8vo,  1826;  p.  194. 

830  Tableau  Ethnographique  (supra,  note  1  in  Chap.  II),  pp.  9-10,  67-76;  PI.  26,  27,  31,  32. 


THEPOLTGENISTS.  511 

Hott,  and  myself,  the  testimony  of  Egyptian  monuments  to  prove 
that  types  have  not  altered  in  4000  years,  continues :  "  These  facts 
are,  to  my  eyes,  of  the  utmost  importance,  because  they  tend  to  fix 
the  opinion  of  those  who  might  he  tempted  to  believe  that  races 
undergo,  in  the  course  of  ages,  such  modifications  as  that  the  negro, 
for  instance,  might  be  derived  from  the  white  man.  All  inductions 
drawn  from  archaeology  give  to  this  opinion  the  most  splintering 
denial.  The  idea  of  the  permanence  of  races  is  justified  by  all 
known  facts.  Now,  remarkable  circumstance !  in  order  that  one 
could  admit  the  variability  of  types,  it  would  require  that,  for  three 
or  four  thousand  years,  if  not  a  radical  change  in  races,  at  least  a 
tendency  towards  change,  should  have  been  observed;  whereas  the 
facts,  far  from  demonstrating  any  tendency  of  this  kind,  prove,  on 
the  contrary,  that  the  races  of  to-day  are  perfectly  identical  with 
those  of  by-gone  ages." 

Discarding,  therefore,  as  non-proven,  such  deduction  as  the  exist- 
ence of  negro  races  in  early  Europe,  there  are  other  circumstances 
which  favor  the  probability  that,  even  subsequently  to  humatile 
man,  inferior  types  of  humanity  preceded  the  immigration  into  (or 
rather,  perhaps,  inferential  occupancy  of)  Scandinavia,  Germany, 
France,  Spain,  and  Italy,  by  high-caste  Indo-Germanic  races.  See 
philological  inductions  of  Maury  [supra,  p.  43]. 

I  have  read  somewhere,  though  my  note  of  the  work  is  mislaid, 
that  Prof.  Eetzius  has  met,  in  the  peat-bogs  and  oldest  sepulchres  of 
Northern  Europe,  with  skeletons  of  a  Mongolic  or  hyperborean  (Lapp  ?) 
type,  of  an  age  anterior  to  the  cairns  and  barrows  wherein  he  and 
Nilsson,331  recognize  those  of  oraehy-kephalie  and  dolicho-kephalic 
races — these  last  being,  to  some  extent,  precursors  of  the  historical 
Norsemen,  Danes,  Swedes,  Jutes,  Saxons,  &c,  scattered  along  the 
western  Baltic  coasts. 

De  Gobineau,332  notwithstanding  some  slight  inadvertences  due  to 
velocity  of  thought  and  composition,  joined  to  the  use  of  the  term 
"finnique"  (Finnish)  in  senses  which  I  fancy  to  be  historically  un- 
tenable,333 has  certainly  brought  out  some  startling  phenomena  on  the 
"primitive  populations  of  Europe."  To  his  brilliant  pages  I  must 
refer  for  sketches  of  early  Thracians,  Illyrians,  Etruscans,  lheres, 
Galls,  and  Italiots.     They  are  painted  by  a  master-hand. 

331  Skandinaviska  Nordens  Urinvanare,  &c,  Christianstad,  4to,  1838;  PI.  J),  pp.  1-13. 

332  lnigalilc  des  Races  Humaines,  Paris,  8vo,  1855 ;  III,  passim,  Chapters  I-IV,  and  pp.  2, 
19,  28. 

333  As  Uralians  in  geographical  origin,  no  Finns  could  have  been  in  primitive  France.  Cf. 
the  authorities  in  Desmoulins,  Races  Humaines,  pp.  53-5,  154: — also,  Kxapb'oth,  Tableaux, 
p.  234. 


512  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

'  The  upshot  is,  that,  in  common  with  Gerard,334  another  polygenist, 
progressive  ethnology  must,  sooner  or  later,  face  the  question, — 
whether  primordial  Europe  was  not  inhabited  by  some  indigenous 
Europeans ;  long  before  the  historical  advance,  westwards  (whence?), 
of  those  three  groups  of  proximate  races  denominated  Celtic,  Teu- 
tonic, and  Sclavonian?  De  Brotonne335  had  prepared  us  for  the 
conjecture,  that  the  above  triple  migration  had  overlapped,  as  it 
were,  a  pre-existent  population.  Kombst  and  Keith  Johnston336  have 
beautifully  illustrated  the  secondary  formations  of  humanity  in  the 
British  Isles;  of  which  Wilson337  indicates  much  material  for  inqui- 
ries into  the  primary.  Mr.  Thomas  Wright,338  and  other  distinguished 
antiquaries  in  England,  by  determining  the  cemeteries  and  artistic 
vestiges  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  facilitate  our  apprehension  of 
other  remains  to  these  anterior  or  posterior;  while  M.  Alfred 
Maury339  suggests,  to  national  archaeologists,  the  true  processes 
through  which  to  recover  and  harmonize  multitudinous  fragments 
of  some  ante-historical  races  of  France. 

Reasoning  by  analogy,  it  would  (now  that  we  are  beginning  to 
understand  better  some  of  the  ancient  superpositions  of  immigrant, 
or  Allophylian,  races,  in  other  continents,  upon  aboriginal  popula- 
tions of  the  soil)  become  somewhat  exceptional  were  Europe  not  to 
present  exemplifications  of  that  which,  elsewhere,  is  rising  to  the 
dignity  of  a  law.  The  Qagots,  the  Coliberts  of  Bas-Poitou,  the 
Ohuatas  of  Majorca,  the  Marans  of  Auvergne,  the  Oiseliers  of  the 
duchy  of  Bouillon,  the  Cacous  of  Paray,  the  Jews  of  Gevaudan, 
&c.,  whose  prolonged  existence,  and  sometimes  whose  historical 
derivation,  are  discussed  with  so  much  erudition  by  Michel,340  prove, 
that  all  exuviae  of  such  unstoried  races  of  man  are,  as  yet,  neither 
obliterated  nor  fully  enumerated ;  even  in  the  World's  most  archseo- 
logically-prepense  community. 

Vain,  at  the  same  time,  must  be  any  effort  to  search  for  such 

334  Bistoire  des  Races  Primitives  de  VEurope,  depuis  leur  formation  jusqu'a  leur  rencontre- 
dans  la  Gaule,  Bruxelles,  12mo,  1849;  p.  389. 

333  Filiations  et  Migrations  des  Peuples,  Paris,  8vo,  1837. 

336  Physical  Atlas,  new  ed.,  Edinburgh,  fol.,  1855;  PI.  33,  and  pp.  109-110,  "Ethno- 
graphic Map  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland." 

337  Archozology  and  Prehistoric  Annals  of  Scotland,  Edinburgh,  8vo,  1851 ;  pp.  168-87, 
695-9. 

338  Anglo-Saxon  Antiquities  (Memoirs  of  the  Hist.  Soc.  of  Lancashire  and  Cheshire), 
Liverpool,  8vo,  1855 ;  pp.  38-9. 

339  Questions  relatives  &  I' Ethnologic  Anciennc  de  la  France,  (Extrait  de  l'Annuaire  de  la 
Socie'te'  Imperiale  des  Antiquaries  de  France  pour  1852),  Paris,  18mo,  1853;  pp.  22,  40-1. 

340  Bistoire  des  Races  Maudites  de  la  France  et  de  VEspagne,  Paris,  8vo,  1847 :  2  vols. 
passim.  See  also  Priohakd,  Nat.  Bist.  of  Man,  1855;  I,  pp.  258-74;  for  other  "Abo- 
rigines." 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  513 

petty  relics  of  lost  nations  in  the  terse  nomenclature,  or  within  the 
geographical  area  covered  by,  the  Xth  chapter  of  G-enesis.  rlo 
ethnic  indications,  in  this  ancient  ehorograph,  carry  us,  northwards 
or  westwards,  beyond  the  coasts  of  the  Euxine,  Archipelago,  and 
Mediterranean  (not  even  occidentally  as  far  as  Italy ;  except  in  the 
doubtful  location  of  Tarshish,  TRESIS,  —  Tartessus  in  Spain  ?  or 
Tarsus  in  Cilicia?341  A  document  which,  at  every  explanatory  gloss 
and  in  its  local  tendency  of  sentiment,  betrays  Ohaldcean  authorship  ; 
and  whose  utmost  antiquity  of  compilation  cannot,  without  violating 
exegetical  rules,  be  fixed  earlier  than  Assyria's  empire  at  the  apogee 
of  its  might — being,  I  think,  a  sort  of  catalogue  of  Shalmanassar's, 
or  similar  monarch's,  satrapies  —  would  be  rejected,  at  this  enlight- 
ened day,  as  apochryphal,  did  it  exhibit  phenomena  foreign  to  its 
natural  horizon  of  knowledge.  But  it  does  not.  Taking  its  first 
editorship  at  between-  the  7th  and  10th  centuries  b.  c,  its  principles 
of  projection  are  in  accordance  with  historical  circumstances ;  which 
certainly  were  not  Mosaic. 

"It  is  thus,"  observes  Courtet  de  ITsle,342  "that  Moses  could  not 
have  spoken  of  Turkish,  Mongol,  or  Toungouse  populations,  which 
in  his  time  were  still  concealed  from  view  in  the  most  oriental  part 
of  Asia.  The  Chinese,  especially,  constituted  already  a  very  ancient 
society,  at  the  time  to  which  the  date  of  the  Hebrew  books  may  be 
referred;  but,  at  no  epoch  whatever,  do  the  traditions  of  Western 
Asia  embrace  events  relating  to  the  Chinese."  The  same  touchstone 
is  applied  by  this  skilful  polygenist  to  the  Coraeans,  hyperboreans, 
Americans  and  negroes;  about  whom  he  says  —  "In  the  posterity 
of  KTham  [which  is  merely  Shame,  Egypt]  are  particularly  comprised 
the  indigenous  populations  of  the  southern  part  of  the  ancient  world: 
it  is  a  swarthy  (noirdtre)  race,  which  it  would  be  erroneous  to  com- 
pound with  the  negro  type.  Everything,  in  fact,  attests  that  negroes 
are  not  contained  in  the  genealogy  of  Moses." 

If,  by  way  of  example,  for  ethnic  supeipositions  of  higher  types 
over  an  autochthonous  group  of  races,  we  appeal  to  Hindostan, 
Prichard's  own  chart,343  together  with  the  posthumous  edition  of  his 

341  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  477-9: — Barker,  Lares  and  Penates,  Cilicia  and  its  Governors, 
London,  8vo,  1853;  pp.  210-11.  The  determination  of  Tartessus,  as  Tarshish  whence  apes 
(Kophlm,  II  Kings,  X,  22)  were  exported,  cannot  be  decided  through  Zoology.  De  Blain- 
ville  (Osteographie,  pp.  28-49)  considers  the  species  to  have  been  the  Pithecus  ruber  of 
Ethiopia :  in  which  case  Tarshish  must  have  lain,  like  Ophir,  down  the  Eed  Sea.  Gervais 
(Mammiferes,  p.  76)  prefers  the  magot  of  Barbary;  and  removes  the  difficulty  I  suggested 
(op.  cit.  479)  of  "cocks  and  hens,"  by  proposing  ostriches.  Quatremere  (Me'moire  sur  le 
Pays  d'Ophir,  Mem.  de  l'Acad.,  Paris,  1845,  pp.  862-75)  thinks  they  were perroouets. 

942  Tableau  ethnographique  du  Genre  Humain,  Paris,  8vo,  1849;  pp.  73-4,  69. 

343  Six  ethnographical  Maps,  with  a  sheet  of  Letterpress,  London,  fol.,  1843  ;  Plate  1st, 
"Asia,"  Nos.  10,  "  Aboriginal  mountain-tribes  of  India." 

33 


514 


THE     MONOGENIST S    AND 


last  work,344  furnishes  many  instances  of  surviving  aborigines.  These 
have  been  more  copiously  and  critically  examined  by  Lieutenant- 
General  Briggs,345  whose  conclusions  are  the  following : 

"  1.  That  the  Hindus  [i.  e.  the  Aryian,  or  white  people's  immigra- 
tions] entered  India  from  a  foreign  country,  and  that  they  found  it 
pre-occupied  by  inhabitants. 

2.  That  by  slow  degrees  they  possessed  themselves  of  the  whole 
of  the  soil,  reducing  to  serfage  those  they  could  retain  upon  it. 

3.  That  they  brought  with  them  the  Sanscrit  language,  a  tongue 
different  from  that  of  the  aborigines. 

4.  That  they  introduced  into  the  country  municipal  institutions. 

5.  That  the  aborigines  differ  in  every  respect  from  the  Hindus. 

6.  Lastly ;  that  the  aborigines  throughout  India  are  derived  from 
one  common  source." 

Allowing  this  last  conclusion  to  be  correct,  it  becomes  positive 
that  the  source  of  this  aboriginal  group  of  races  in  Hindostan  must 
be  radically  distinct  from  that  of  the  later  Sanscritic  intruders, — 
whose  earliest  monuments,  the  Vedas,  trace  them  backwards  to 
Sogdiana,  Bactriana  and  Persia,  as  their  own  primordial  homesteads, 
where  their  characteristics  seem  to  blend  into  races  of  the  Arian 
group.  Briggs  enumerates,  among  extant  indigenous  tribes  of 
India : — 


The  Bengies  in  Bengal, 
"   Tirhus  in  Tirhut, 
"  Koles  in  Kolywara  and  Kolwan, 
"  Malas  in  Malda  and  Malpur, 
"  Domes  in  Domapur,  &c.  &c, 
"  Mirs  in  Mirwara, 
"  Bhils  in  Bhilwara  and  Bhilwan, 
"  Mahars  in  Maha  Rastra  (Mahratta), 
"  Mans  in  Mandesa, 
"   Gonds  in  Gondwara  or  Gondwana, 
"   Garrows  in  Bhagalpur, 
"  Sonthals  in  Cattack, 
"  Bhars  in  Gorakpur, 
"   Chtris  in  Ghazipur, 


the  Dhanuks  in  Behar, 
"  Dhers  in  Sagor, 
"  Minas  in  Amblr, 
"  Ramusis  in  Telingana, 
"  Bedars  in  Dekhan, 
"  Cherumars  in  Malabar, 
"   Curumbas  in  Canara, 
"    Vedars  in  Travancore, 
"  Marawas  at  the  South, 
"  Kallars  in  Tinevelly, 
"  Pullars  in  Tanjore, 
"  Patties  in  Arcot, 
"   Chenchis  in  Mysore, 
"  Chenciwars  of  Telingana  : 


s*4  Natural  History  of  Man  (supra,  note  172,)  I,  pp.  248-57. 

845  Two  lectures  on  the  aboriginal  race  of  India,  as  distinguished  from  the  Sanscritic  or  Hindu 
Race — R.  Asiatic  Soc. ,  London,  8vo,  1852 ;  pp.  6.  —  Compare  A  Sketch  of  Assam,  with  some 
account  of  the  Hill  Tribes,  by  an  officer;  London,  8vo,  1847,  passim,  for  many  other  abori- 
gines on  the  confines  of  Indo-China  ;  —  and  Hooker  (Himalayan  Journals,  London,  8vo, 
1854;  I,  pp.  127-41),  for  the  Lepchas  &c,  and  (II,  pp.  14)  for  the  Harrum-mos  and  others. 
For  the  affinities  or  divergencies  of  Dravirian  idioms  in  relation  to  other  groups  of  tongues, 
the  reader  will  be  unable  to  find  more  masterly  elucidations  than  in  my  friend  M.  Maury's 
Chapter  I,  pp.  52-5,  74-6,  84,  ante. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  515 

besides  the  Kamiwars,  Yelmiwars,  Barki,  Dondassi,  Bandipote,  Talliar, 
and  others. 

This  arid  catalogue  of  names  indicates  the  number  and  variety  of 
these  seemingly-proximate  races.  "With  the  exception  of,  here  and 
there,  more  or  less  defective,  sketches  of  a  Garrow,  a  Tuda,  a  Naga, 
a  Siahpush,  a  Bhot'iya,  or  a  Ceylonese,  I  have  seen  no  authentic 
portaits  of  Hindostanic  aborigines  whence  ideas  about  their  several 
characteristics  can  be  obtained.  As  for  their  crania,  "ce  n'est  pas  le 
genre"  among  Anglo-Indians  to  preserve,  for  science,  those  they  cut 
off;  such  men  as  Hodgson  of  ISTepaul,  and  Cunningham  of  Ladak,346 
being  honorable  exceptions.  A  succinct  resume  of  aboriginal  families 
of  mankind  known  to  exist  within  the  "East  Indian  Realm"  of 
zoology,  has  been  compiled  from  the  latest  sources,  with  his  usual 
ability,  by  Maury.347  Space  restricts  me  to  reiteration  of  the  lament, 
over  the  ethnological  supineness  of  those  who  ought  to  fill  scientific 
collectorships  in  India,  implied  in  his  remarks : — "These  indigenous 
tribes,  of  which  the  debris  still  wander  in  the  north-west  of  America, 
those  insular  septs  that  navigators  have  encountered  in  Polynesia, 
Oceanica,  and  Indian  Archipelago — of  such,  Asia  even  at  this  day 
yet  offers  us  the  pendants.  At  an  ancient  epoch,  which  it  is  im- 
possible rigorously  to  assign,  the  centre  and  the  south  of  this  part 
of  the  world  were  inhabited  by  those  savage  races  that  Hindoo  civili- 
zation has  pushed  away  before  it,  and  which  Chinese  society  has 
ejected  toward  the  southern  extremities  of  its  empire.  It  is  in  the 
almost  impenetrable  defiles,  which  separate  Hindostan  from  Thibet 
and  from  China,  wherein  these  disinherited  populations  have  sought 
refuge.  There  they  subsist  still ;  and  there  they  will  continue  to 
subsist  until  English  colonization  [as  in  the  pending  case  of  the 
Santals,  1855-6]  shall  have  forever  blotted  them  out  from  the  soil. 
It  is  with  races  of  men  as  with  races  of  animals,  which  Providence 
creates,  and  afterwards  abandons  to  destruction.  *  *  *  Who  can 
count  how  many  races  have  already  disappeared ;  what  populations, 
of  which  we  ignore  the  history,  the  very  existence,  have  quitted 
our  globe,  without  leaving  on  it  their  name,  at  least,  for  a  trace  !" 

Only  since  1850,  through  Arnaud  and  Vayssiere,348  have  we  heard 
of  the  Akhdam  (servants)  of  Southern  Arabia ;  probably  last  degraded 
relics  of  the  aboriginal  Cushite,  or  Himyarite, stock;  to  be  added  to 

346  Lad&k,  physical,  statistical  and  "historical,  with  notices  of  the  surrounding  countries,  London, 
8vo,  1854;  pp.  285-312;  Plates  10-11,  13-18,  22-24. 

347  Les  Populations  Primitives  du  Nord  de  V Hindouslan — Extrait  du  Bulletin  de  la  Sociele  de 
Geographic;  Paris,  1854;  p.  39. 

M8  "  Les  Akhdam  de  l'Y<jmen,  leur  origine  probable,  leurs  mceurs  "  —  Journal  Asialiquc, 
Paris,  April,  1850 ;  pp.  380-2. 


516  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

those  more  favorably  known  at  Mareb  and  Zhaffar  as  speakers  of 
JEhkili.3'9  "  For  the  fades,  these  Akhdarn  differ  much  from  the  Arab, 
who  dwells  alongside  of  them;  possessing,  on  the  contrary,  the 
strongest  resemblance  to  the  Abyssinians  and  the  people  of  the 
Samhar  [littoral  Abyssinians  on  the  Red  Sea]  ;  who,  according  to  M. 
Lefevre  ( Voy.  en  Abyss.),  '  present  the  greatest  analogy  with  the 
Hindostanic  race.'"  These  Akhdarn  are  pariahs,  reputed  "unclean" 
by  the  Arabs,  who  despise  their  four  castes  with  inveteracy.  The 
color  of  their  skin  is  reddish,  like  the  Himyarites  (from  dhmar,  red), 
and  their  congeners  the  Habesh;  being  entirely  different  to  the 
lighter  complexions  of  their  lords,  the  Semitic  Arabs  —  although 
both  types  have,  from  immemorial  time,  resided  in  the  same  climate. 

But,  amid  illustrations  that  spring  up  on  every  side  to  fortify  my 
argument  of  aboriginal  populations,  I  must  refrain  from  further 
notice  of  more  than  one  or  two. 

M.  D'Avezac,  and  other  ethnologues  who  have  studied  GuancJie 
traditions  and  Portuguese  accounts  of  the  conquest  of  the  Canary 
Isles,  prove  satisfactorily  that,  despite  such  furious  massacres,  the 
women  were  saved  in  large  numbers  by  the  invaders.  The  result 
was  naturally  an  amalgamation,  between  the  female  Guanches  and  the 
Portuguese  settlers,  that  still  underlies  the  present  population,350 — 
into  which,  importations  from  Africa  have  since  copiously  infiltrated 
Mgritian  blood  of  many  varieties.  Now,  the  same  combination  of 
circumstances  occurred  in  Cuba.351 

Discovered  by  Columbus,  on  the  18th  October,  1492,  this  Island, 
according  to  his  Journal,  contained  a  somewhat  civilized  people, 
timid  and  simple,  already  possessors  of  the  dog  ;  who  were  "  neither 
black  nor  brown,  but  of  the  color  of  Canary-islanders,  with  women 
whiter  still."  They  lived  in  great  fear  of  the  Caribs,  from  whom 
they  differed.in  almost  every  characteristic;352  and  seem  to  have  been 
of  the  same  family  as  the  Ygneris  of  Haiti,  and  other  isles  of  the 

348  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  489-92.  The  discoverer,  my  old  friend  and  colleague  in  Egypt 
for  many  years,  M.  Fulgence  Fresnel,  is  now  no  more.  Bagdad,  last  spring,  was  the  tomb 
of  this  enthusiastic  orientalist, — in  Arabic  studies  never  surpassed. 

350  The  only  specimen  of  this  mixed  stock  that  I  have  seen,  was  a  so-called  mulatto, 
exceedingly  robust  and  intelligent,  native  of  the  Canaries,  by  name  Narcisso;  who,  in  1851, 
nourished  at  Bangor,  Maine ;  as  my  friend  A.  P.  Bradbury,  Esq.,  of  that  ilk,  may  remember. 
Narcisso's  red  complexion  and  muscular  vigor  completely  bore  out  the  southern  specimens 
of  Dr.  Nott  (Types  of  Mankind,  p.  374). 

351  Bertholet,  Essai  historique  sur  Vile  du  Cuba,  &e.,  et  "Analyse  de  l'ouvrage  de  Ramon 
de  la  Sagra" — Bulletin  de  la  Socicte  de  Geographie,  July  1846;  pp.  6,  12,  20—26. 

352  Gosse,  Deformations  arlificielles  du  Crane,  Paris,  8vo,  1855;  pp.  102-5;  citing  De 
Navakette  (Relations  des  qualre  Voyages  entrepris  par  Christophe  Colombe,  Paris,  1S28),  and 
Ferdinand  Denis  (Revue  de  Paris,  LV.  supplement).  For  the  Caribs,  see  D'Orbiqnt, 
VBomme  Americain—'Yoy.  dans  FAm^rique  du  Sud,  Paris,  4to,  1839. 


THE     POLYGEKISTS.  517 

Antilles,  whose  traditions  dated  back  to  the  occupancy  of  Florida.  At 
St.  Domingo,  Columbus  was  particularly  struck  with  the  whiteness 
of  their  skin,  as  well  as  with  their  culture  and  inoffensive  habits  (no 
weapons) ;  circumstances  which  strongly  contrast  them  with  the  red- 
dish-olive hue  and  ferocity  of  the  continental  Caribs.  Their  posses- 
sion of  the  dog,  too,  before  Spanish  communications,  is  an  interesting 
fact ;  but  I  do  not  know  whether  its  species  has  been  compared  with 
the  enormous  mastiffs  (apparently)  of  the  Guanches,353  whose  skele- 
tons turn  up,  now  and  then,  among  mummied  human  remains  at  the 
Canaries. 

This  original  population  of  Cuba,  by  some  writers  exaggerated 
to  a  million,  and  more  reasonably  estimated  by  Fray  Luis  Bertran 
at  about  200,000,  had  been  reduced  to  14,000  by  a.  d.  1517.  Las 
Casas,  Jose  Maria  de  la  Torre,  and  Valdes,  show  that  there  were  still 
some  extant  in  1533 ;  but  Diego  de  Soto,  in  1538,  slaughtered  the 
remainder  so  effectually,  that,  about  1553,  Gomara  says  there  was  no 
longer  a  native  alive.  Bertholet,  however,  considers  such  complete 
extinction  over-stated ;  because,  while  many  of  the  males  were  trans- 
ported to  the  South  American  continent,  the  women  were  retained 
by  the  Spaniards.  Precisely  the  same  destruction  of  native  Antillian 
life,  —  in  order  to  make  way  for  a  bastard  race  since  bred  between 
exotic  Spaniards  and  imported  negroes  —  occurred  on  other  islands. 
Thus,  Priaulx  observes,  "Haiti,  which,  at  its  discovery,  contained 
1,000,000  inhabitants,  — sixty  years  after,  15,000,  — and  in  1729,  the 
aborigines  were  extinct."35* 

A  curious  report  to  the  Spanish  court  [Cartas  de  varones  de  Sevilla), 
made  by  Fray  Diego  Sarmiento,  Bishop  of  Cuba,  1550-1,  proves  the 
fact  whilst  deprecating  the  reason.  —  "The  Indians  diminish  and 
disappear  without  propagating  themselves ;  because  the  Spaniards 
and  the  metis  [already  numerous  in  58  years]  marry  the  Indian  wo- 
men ;  and  that  Indian  male  who,  at  this  day,  could  procure  one  80 
years  old,  is  even  very  lucky.  I  believe  [continues  the  charitable 
Diocesan]  that,  in  order  to  preserve  and  restore  the  population  of 
this  island,  it  would  be  well  to  bring  over  some  Indian  females  from 
Florida,  for  the  purpose  of  uniting  them  with  the  Indians  of  this 
country."  Nevertheless  there  existed  still,  in  1701,  some  descendants 
of  the  old  stock  at  Iguani;  and  Bertholet,  quoting  Milne  Edwards's 
law  that,  after  several  generations,  the  old  blood  will  occasionally 
"crop  out,"  shows  how  this  explains  many  ethnic  points  of  Cuban 

353D'Avezac,  Isles  de  VAfrique; — Usher,  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  342  ; — Prichard,  Nat.  Hist., 
1855  ;   I,  p.  272. 

354  Quozstiones  Mosaicce,  p.  298,  note, — citing  P.  Marqat  au  P.  de  la  Neuville,  Lellres 
£difiantes,  vol.  VII 


518  THE    MOKOGENISTS     AND 

physiology ;  precisely  as  in  like  manner,  similar  causes  produced  the 
same  effects  at  the  Canary  Isles.355 

From  Cuba356  to  the  Island  of  St.  Vincent  the  transition  is  natural. 
Here  we  should  still  behold  the  aboriginal  Caribs,  but  for  tbeir  ex- 
pulsion "en  masse,"  in  1796,  at  a  cost  of  one  million  sterling,  by 
English  settlers,  to  the  island  of  Roatan.357  Already,  from  1675,  the 
shipwreck  of  a  Guinea  slaver  near  St.  Vincent  had  infused  so  much 
exotic  negro  blood  into  the  native  stock  as  to  have  divided  the  latter 
into  black  and  yellow  Caribs.  Transplanted  again,  by  Spaniards,  to 
the  main-land  of  Honduras,  these  mulatto-Caribs  found  themselves 
in  the  midst  of  another  population  of  half-breeds ;  viz. :  the  Sambos 
of  the  Musquito  shore,  formed  there,  since  the  17th  century,  between 
survivors  from  the  wreck  of  another  African  slaver  and  the  native 
Indian  tribes,  amid  whom,  also,  European  buccaneers  had  not  failed 
to  bequeath  many  varieties  of  white  blood.  This  infiltration  of  the 
essentially-domesticable  qualities  of  negro  races  into  the  less  tame- 
able Indian  (although  the  Central  American  approach  the  Toltecan 
rather  than  the  Barbarous*®  tribes  in  social  tendencies),  has  not  been 
without  its  good  effects  in  producing  a  laborious  population  of  maho- 
gany cutters :  whereas,  in  the  everglades  of  Florida,  crosses  between 
run-away  negresses  and  the  truly-barbarous  Indian  exhibit  but  incar- 
nate devils  for  ferocity  and  hostility  to  civilization.  Recent  events 
on  the  Panama  isthmus359  confirm  the  deleterious  consequences  of 
such  intermixtures,  prognosticated  five  years  ago  by  Berthold  See- 
man.360 

"  Morton  informs  us,  besides,"  wrote  Dr.  Gosse,  alluding  to  a  cha- 
racteristic African  propensity  for  aping  dominant  races,361  "  that  the 
shipwrecked  negroes  at  St. Vincent  [Crania  Americana,  p.  240)  had 
at  first  deformed  their  heads,  in  imitation  of  the  Caribs,  their  masters ; 
but,  so  soon  -as  emancipated,  they  continued  it  in  sign  of  liberty.  This 
was  already  the  opinion  of  Leblond  (Voyage  aux  Antilles,  1767-1802, 

855  Bertholet,  "  Guanches,"  Memoires  de  la  Societe  Ethnologique,  Paris,  8vo,  1841  ;  PaTt 
I,  pp.  130-46,  1843;  II,  pp.  83-111.  These  intermixtures  are  unnoticed  by  Pkichakd, 
Nat.  Bist.  of  Man,  1855;  I,  pp.  272-4;  or  in  II,  pp.  590,  638-640. 

356  One  cannot,  of  course,  within  200  pages,  discuss  all  the  collateral  questions  bearing 
upon  the  transplantation  of  races  from  lands  where  they  were  indigenous  to  countries  where 
they  are  not ;  but,  for  an  exposition  of  the  present  ruined  state  of  the  emancipated  Antilles, 
consult,  above  all,  "Our  West-Indian  Colonies:"  Jamaica,  by  H.  B.  Evans,  M.  R. C.S.,  late 
Surgeon  superintendent  of  immigrants,  Lucea,  Jamaica;  London,  8vo,  1855. 

357  Squier,  Notes  on  Central  America,  New  York,  8vo,  1855;  pp.  208,  212-17. 

358  Morton,  Physical  Type  of  the  American  Indians ; — Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  276-80. 

359  Wermuth,  "A  propos  du  massacre  de  Panama;"  The  American,  Paris,  II,  No.  76;  7 
June,  1856. 

3«>  Voyage  of  E.  M.  S.  Herald,  1845-51,  London,  8vo,  1853;  I,  p.  302. 
361  Deformations  artificielles  dn  Crane,  p.  126. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  519 

p.  154) :  '  They  felt,'  says  he,  '  that  this  ineffaceable  mark  would  for- 
ever distinguish  them  from  the  African  race,  who  were  being  sold  as 
slaves  in  islands  inhabited  by  the  whites.'  " 

Heureuz  le  peuple  dont  VMstoire  est  ennuyeuse,  might  not,  perhaps, 
be  applied  by  Montesquieu  to  the  wretched  peoples  referred  to ;  but 
fear  lest  its  point  should  be  directed  to  the  above  excerpta  compels 
me  to  finish  with  a  clew  to  the  philosophy  of  these  complicated  amal- 
gamations. It  is  from  the  pen  of  one  who,  as  regards  American 
archaeology  in  general,  and  Central  American  ethnology  in  particular, 
has  no  rival  amidst  his  many  admiring  friends  at  the  present  hour.362 

"Anthropological  science  has  determined  the  existence  of  two 
laws,  of  vital  importance  in  their  application  to  men  and  nations. 

"  First.  That  in  all  cases  where  a  free  amalgamation  takes  place 
between  two  different  stocks,  unrestrained  by  what  is  sometimes 
called  prejudice,  but  which  is,  in  fact,  a  natural  instinct,  the  result  is 
the  final  absolute  absorption  of  one  into  the  other.  This  absorption 
is  more  rapid  as  the  races  or  families  thus  brought  in  contact  approxi- 
mate in  type,  and  in  proportion  as  one  or  the  other  preponderate  in 
numbers ;  that  is  to  say,  Nature  perpetuates  no  human  hybrids,  as, 
for  instance,  a  permanent  race  of  mulattoes. 

"  Second.  That  all  violations  of  the  natural  distinctions  of  race,  or 
of  those  instincts  which  were  designed  to  perpetuate  the  superior 
races  in  their  purity,  invariably  entail  the  most  deplorable  results, 
affecting  the  bodies,  intellects,  and  moral  perceptions  of  the  nations 
who  are  thus  blind  to  the  wise  designs  of  Nature,  and  unmindful  of 
her  laws.  In  other  words,  the  offspring  of  such  combinations  or 
amalgamations  are  not  only  generally  deficient  in  physical  constitu- 
tion, in  intellect,  and  in  moral  restraint,  but  to  a  degree  which  often 
contrasts  unfavorably  with  any  of  the  original  stocks. 

"  In  no  respect  are  these  deficiencies  more  obvious  than  in  matters 
affecting  government.  "We  need  only  point  to  the  anarchical  states 
of  Spanish  America  to  verify  the  truth  of  the  propositions  laid  down. 
In  Central  and  South  America,  and  Mexico,  we  find  a  people  not 
only  demoralized  from  the  unrestrained  association  of  different  races, 
but  also  the  superior  stocks  becoming  gradually  absorbed  into  the 
lower,  and  their  institutions  disappearing  under  the  relative  barba- 
rism of  which  the  latter  are  the  exponents." 

362  Squier,  op.  cit.,  pp.  54-8.  See,  for  the  same  argument,  that  the  present  fall  of  the 
Spanish  race  in  America  is  to  be  chiefly  ascribed  to  their  proclivity  (as  a  dark  type)  to  amal- 
gamate with  any  race  still  darker  —  D'Halloy  (Races  Humaines,  pp.  44-5).  "We  meet 
indeed,"  well  says  Davis,  "with  confusion  of  blood  on  a  great  scale,  but  look  in  vain  for  a 
new  race.  Nature  asserts  her  dominion  on  all  hands  in  a  deterioration  and  degradation,  the 
fatal  and  depopulating  consequences  of  which  it  is  appalling  to  contemplate."  (Crania  Bri- 
tannica,  p.  7,  note.) 


520  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

With  reluctance  I  must  terminate  these  digressional  notices  of 
human  autochthones  in  different  zoological  realms.  "  The  ancients," 
well  remarks  Courtet  de  l'lsle,363  "  unanimously  professed  belief  in 
autochthones.  *  *  *  Now,  this  principle  of  indigenousness,  consecrated 
among  animals  and  plants,364  was  entirely  equivalent,  among  the 
Greeks,  to  the  principle  which  the  plurality  of  races  establishes  at 
the  present  day."  It  is  traceable  in  Homer,  Hesiod,  and  Hippocrates. 
Ephorus  of  Cyme  sustained  it  when  he  divided  mankind  into  four 
races,  according  to  the  four  points  of  the  compass ;  and  Aristotle 
held  it  where  he  adopts  three  types,  "  Scythians,  Egyptians,  and 
Thracians."  The  writer  of  Xth  Genesis365  had  previously  spread 
out  his  nations,  cities,  tribes,  and  countries,  into  a  tripartite  ethnieo- 
geographical  distribution,  symbolized  by  "Shem,Ham,  and  Japheth;" 
which  arrangement  Knobel366  agrees  with  me  in  denominating  the 
yellow,  the  swarthy,  and  the  white  types.  The  Egyptians,  centuries 
previously,  had  already  divided  mankind,  as  known  to  them,  into 
four — the  red,  the  yellow,  the  white,  and  the  black  races ;  calling 
themselves,  as  men  of  the  red  or  honorable  color,  by  the  term 
"rotu,"  ReT,  race  "par  excellence:"367  and,  about  nine  centuries 
subsequently,  four  nations— Lydian  (Japethic),  Scythian  (not  alluded 
to  in  Xth  Genesis),  Negro  (African,  and  also  excluded  from  that 
chart),  and  Chaldsean  (Semitic)  —  were  carved  on  the  rock-hewn 
sepulchre  of  Darius : 36S  while  Linnaeus,  3500  years  after  the  Diospo- 
litan  ethnographer,  at  first  tried  to  classify  human  natural  divisions 
into  four,  according  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe. 

Wholly  omitted  as  such  things  are  in  the  last  edition  of  Prichard, 
the  anthropologist,  in  lieu  of  the  preceding  facts  on  hybridity,  is 
favored  with  any  quantity  of  "sentiment;"369 — mostly  thrown  away, 
their  ethnological  bases  being  mostly  false.  Until  science  has 
stridden  over  the  threshold  in  these  new  inquiries  of  the  Mortonian 
school,  we  may  say  of  sentiment  what  Father  Richard  Simon's  Car- 
dinal370 replied  to  an  anxious  theologer — "Questo  e  buono  per  la 
Predica." 

363  Tableau  Elhnographique,  p.  67. 

364  See  particularly,  as  the  latest  enunciation  of  zoological  science,  the  addresses  of  Prof. 
Agassiz  before  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  at  Albany, — 
reported  in  the  New  York  Herald,  26,  27,  28  Aug.,  1856. 

365  Types  of  Mankind,  Part  II,  passim. 

»*  Die  Volkertafel  der  Genesis,  Giessen,  8vo,  1850;  p.  13. 

as?  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  84-86,  247-9;  wood-cuts,  figs.  1,  162,  163,  164,  165:— to 
which  add,  De  Rouge,  Tombeau  d'Aahmes,  chef  des  Nautonniers,  Paris,  4to,  1851 ;  pp.  41-2, 
56: — and  Brugsch,  Reiseberichte,  Berlin,  8vo,  1855;  p.  331. 

368  Pulszkt,  ante,  Chap.  II,  p.  150,  fig.  35. 

339  Nat.  History  of  Man,  1S55 ;  II,  pp.  657-714. 

370  Hist.  crit.  de  I'Aneien  Testament. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  521 

"0  ye  mitred  heads!  lay  not 
Approving  hands  on  skulls  that  cannot  teach, 
And  will  not  learn." 

(Cowpek.) 

Probably  autochthones,  certainly  aboriginal,  were  the  men  of 
prognathous  and  otherwise  inferior  type  whose  humatile  crania,  in 
the  caverns  and  diluvium  of  Europe,  instigated  my  excursus  in  quest 
of  parallels.  Of  these,  however,  I  have  seen  none  of  the  true  Bel- 
gian or  Austrian  specimens :  those  pointed  out  to  me  in  the  magni- 
ficent G-alerie  d' Anthropologic  at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  by  my  friends 
MM.  Jacquard  and  Rousseau,  being,  with  one  exception,  ancient 
Gaulish,  Keltic,  or  Etruscan.  I  obtained  photographic  copies  of  the 
most  interesting,  together  with  that  of  the  exceptional  skull  marked 
"Craue  (Gard)—  Type  oelte.  M.  Serres."  These371 1  had  the  pleasure 
of  passing  on,  in  London,  to  the  cabinet  of  our  obliging  colleague  Mr. 
J.  Barnard  Davis,  of  Shelton,  Staff.;  in  whose  hands,  as  joint  author 
of  Omnia  Britannica,  they  may  become  really  available  to  science, 
through  comparisons  with  the  wide  range  of  cognate  British  skulls 
now  undergoing  his  and  Dr.  Thurnham's  critical  analyses.  As  a 
specimen,  merely,  of  the  high  scientific  tone  adopted  by  these  gen- 
tlemen, I  cannot  refrain  from  reproducing  their  opening  sentences 
on  the  Historical  Ethnology  of  Britain.372 

"  It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  the  plants  and  animals  which 
cover  the  surface  of  the  globe  are  to  be  regarded  as  forming  groups, 
each  having  a  specific  centre,  from  and  around  which,  within  limits 
determined  by  natural  laws  as  to  climate,  temperature,  &c,  the 
several  species  have  been  diffused.  The  plants  and  animals  com- 
posing the  flora  and  fauna  of  the  British  Islands  are,  however,  not 
peculiar  to  them,  but  are  almost  without  exception  identical  with 
those  of  different  parts  of  the  continent  of  Europe ;  and  thus  the 
existence  of  a  specific  centre  for  the  isolated  area  of  these  islands, 
or,  in  other  words,  any  special  creation  of  plants  and  animals  within 
their  limits,  cannot  with  any  probability  be  admitted. 

"  The  late  distinguished  Professor  E.  Forbes,  by  a  remarkably 
happy  example  of  philosophical  induction,  has  shown  that  the 
terrestrial  animals  and  flowering  plants  now  inhabiting  these  islands 
must  have  migrated  hither  over  continuous  land,  which  in  the 
course  of  subsequent  geological  changes  was  destroyed ;  and  that 
this  diffusion  by  migration  occupied  extended  periods  of  time, 
having  various  climatal  conditions,  before,  during  and  after,  the 

311  Reduced  copies  of  some  of  them  have  attracted  Dr.  Meigs's  notice  in  his  Chapter 
III,  figs.  29,  35. 

S'2  Crania  Britannica,  Decade  I,  London,  4to,  1856;  p.  44.  Cf.  Meigs's  Chap.  Ill,  p. 
301,    fig.    29,     ante — for  the  cranioscopical  indicia  so  far  attained. 


522  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

great  Glacial  epoch.  The  characteristic  and  all  the  universally 
distributed  plants  and  animals  of  these  islands,  belong  to  the  Cen- 
tral European  fauna  and  flora,  or  great  Germanic  type.  But  in 
addition  to  this,  the  prevailing,  it  is  shown  that  there  are  the  remains 
of  no  fewer  than  four  other  floras  occupying  more  or  less  limited 
areas  in  Britain,  and  each  having  its  specific  centre  in  some  part  of 
the  continent  of  Europe.  Three  of  these  belong  to  more  southern, 
the  fourth  to  a  more  northern  latitude  or  isotherme.  The  most 
ancient  of  our  floras,  Professor  Forbes  considers  to  be  only  peculiar 
to  the  west  and  south-west  of  Ireland,  and  which  is  shown  to  be 
identical  with  that  of  the  north  of  Spain ;  a  geological  union  or 
Close  approximation  with  which  country  seems  to  be  the  only  method 
of  explaining  the  presence  of  so  characteristic  a  flora,  including  the 
hardier  Saxifrages  and  Heaths  of  the  Asturias,  and  such  plants  as 
Arabis  ciliata,  Pinguicula  grandiflora,  and  Arbutus  unedo.  The  iso- 
lation of  this  West  Irish  flora,  or  Asturian  type,  probably  took  place 
by  the  destruction  of  the  intermediate  land  in  the  glacial  period. 
No  traces  of  any  associated  fauna  remain." 

M.  Maury's  philological  inductions  (supra)  equally  corroborate  the 
view  that  certain  inferior  and  indigenous  races  of  man,  in  pre-historic 
Albion  as  well  as  in  primordial  ISTorth-western  Europe,  were  suc- 
ceeded by  conquering  tribes  of  the  "great  Germanic  type." 


PART    IV. 

We  may  now  reconsider  some  of  the  practical  issues  of  this  in- 
quiry. 

It  has  been  shown,  1st,  that  in  America,  humatile  men  and  huma- 
tile  monkeys  occupy  the  same  palseontological  zones ;  —  2d,  that, 
whilst  all  such  remains  of  man  are  exclusively  of  the  American 
Indian  type,  the  monkeys  called  Hapale,  Cebus,  Callithrix,  &c,  are 
equally  "  terrse  geniti"  of  this  continent;  no  bimane  or  quadrumane 
examples  of  identical  "  species"  of  either  being  found,  fossil,  humatile, 
or  living,  out  of  it ; — 3d,  that,  in  their  respective  epochs  of  existence, 
both,  with  the  slightest  modifications  of  so-termed  "species"  on  the 
monkeys'  side,  have  existed  from  the  geological  period  of  Lund's 
Brazilian  caves,  coupled  with  the  extinct  genera  of  animals  dis- 
covered in  them,  down  to  the  present  day,  contemporaneous; — 4th, 
that,  finally,  permanence  of  type,  as  well  for  humanity  as  for  simiadse, 
is  firmly  established  in  both  genera,  from  the  hour  in  which  we  are 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  523 

living,  back  to  a  vastly  remote,  if  not  incalculable,  era  of  unrecorded 
time. 

Now,  were  some  ethnologist  to  inquire  of  any  naturalist  whether 
he  believed  that  genus  Hapdle,  Oebus,  or  CallitJirix,  had  clambered 
round  from  Mesopotamia,  via  Bhering's  Straits,  to  Peru ;  or  had 
swum  across  the  Atlantic  from  Africa  to  Brazil,  if  not,  perchance, 
athwart  the  Pacific  from  Borneo  to  Chili,  as  one  alternative ;  or, 
whether  American  simice  were  created  in  America,  as  the  other :  I 
presume  such  naturalist  might,  without  committal,  respond  to  this 
query  by  propounding  another  to  the  ethnologist,  viz. :  "Don't  you 
think  that,  whichever  way  American  man  came  to  this  continent,  it 
was  along  the  identical  route  by  which  American  monkeys  had  pio- 
neered the  track  for  him  ?" 

For  myself,  I  cannot  find  out  how  either  came.  Here  both  are, 
and  have  been,  from  the  earliest  ante-historical  period  we  may  guess 
at.  Whenever  an  ethnographer  will  obligingly  point  out  to  me  any 
given  primordial  link,  between  human  autochthones  of  the  Old  World 
and  aborigines  of  the  New,  that  archaeological  criticism  is  unable  to 
shatter,  I  may  trouble  a  naturalist  to  acquaint  me  with  some  mode 
by  which  old  CallitJirix  primsevus  protopithecus,  of  Brazil,  held  inter- 
course anciently  with  his  elder  DryopitJiecus  Fontani  of  France. 

This  is  the  name  just  fixed  by  M.  Lartet, — the  first  discoverer  of 
fossil  simicem  twenty  years  ago,  and  five  years  after  Cuvier's  decease, 
— to  a  new  species  of  anthropoid  monkey  exhumed  by  M.  Fontan, 
from  a  bank  of  marly-clay,  at  Saint-Gaudens  (Haute- Garonne)  near 
the  Pyrenees.374 

It  was  about  the  same  time  last  month375 1  commenced  that  part 
of  my  present  MS.  which  enumerated  {ante,  p.  459)  the  different  fossil 
monkeys  hitherto  disinterred ;  and  the  coincidence  of  M.  Fontan's 
unforeseen  exhumation  of  a  larger  and  higher  type,  in  Europe  too, 
than  any  before  known,  is  so  gratifying,  that  I  prefer  to  let  what  I 
had  then  written  stand,  and  to  avail  myself  here  of  M.  Lartet's  most 
opportune  improvements.  It  is  to  our  collaborator  Prof.  Joseph 
Leidy,  that  I  owe  communication  of  the  "tirage  a  part"  sent  to  him 
last  mail  by  M.  Lartet. 

"The  pieces  of  this  monkey,"  explains  Lartet,  "that  M.  Fontan 
has  charged  me  to  present  in  his  name  to  the  Academy,  consist  in 
two  halves  of  a  lower  jaw  broken  at  their  ascending  rami,  added  to 

3.3  Df.  Blainville,  Oste'ographie. 

3.4  Lartet,  Note  sur  un  grand  Singe  fossile  qui  se  rallache  au  group  des  Singes  supe'rieurs — 
Entrait  des  Comptes  rendus  des  Seances  de  V Academic  des  Sciences ;  Paris,  tome  xliii. ;  28th 
July,  1856;  with  a  plate,  pp.  1-6. 

375  I  am  -writing  at  Philadelphia,  on  this  28th  August,  1856. 


524  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

a  fragment  of  the  anterior  face  of  this  jaw  in  which  the  incisors  were 
planted.  There  was  fotind  at  the  same  time  a  humerus  epiphysized 
at  its  two  extremities."  He  remarks  on  the  teeth  also,- — "This 
would  be  a  process  of  dentition  intermediate  between  that  of  man 
and  of  living  monkeys,  except  the  Gibbon  Siamang,  in  which  I  have 
observed  the  same  circumstances  of  dentition  as  in  our  fossil  monkey. 
(This  gives  me  an  opportunity  to  remember  that  the  Gibbons,  and  in 
particular  the  Gibbon  Siamang,  placed  generally  by  zoologists  in  the 
last  rank  of  the  tribe  of  Simians,  or  Superior  Monkeys,  furnish  not- 
withstanding, through  their  skeleton,  a  totality  of  characteristics 
approaching  very  much  more  considerably  the  human  type  than  one 
can  find  in  the  Orang,  or  even  in  the  Chimpanzee.)" 

"  In  risumi,  the  new  fossil  monkey  comes  evidently  to  place  itself, 
with  some  superior  characters  at  certain  points  of  view,  in  the  group 
of  the  Simians,  which  already  comprises  the  Chimpanzee,  the  Orang, 
the  Gorilla,  the  Gibbons,  and  the  little  fossil  Monkey  of  Sausan  [Plio- 
pithecus  antiquus,  Gerv.).  It  differs  from  all  these  monkeys  through 
some  dental  details  ;  and,  more  manifestly  still,  by  the  very-apparent 
shortening  of  the  face.  The  reduced  size  of  the  incisors  being  allied 
with  great  development  of  the  molars  indicates  a  regimen  essentially 
frugiverous.  The  little  that  is  known,  furthermore,  of  the  bony 
structure  of  the  limbs,  denotes  more  of  agility  than  muscular  energy. 
One  would  be,  therefore,  thus  induced  to  suppose  that  this  Mon- 
key, of  very  large  size,  lived  habitually  upon  trees,  as  do  the  Gibbons 
of  the  present  epoch.  In  consequence  I  will  propose  to  designate  it 
by  the  generic  name  of  Dryopithecus  (from  drus,  tree,  oak  [found  like- 
wise amongst  the  lignites  of  the  same  Pyrensean  region],  and  pithe- 
kos,  monkey).  In  dedicating  it  as  species  to  the  enlightened  natu- 
ralist to  whom  palaeontology  is  indebted  for  this  important  acquisi- 
tion, it  would  be  the  Dryopithecus  Fontani. 

"  Six  fossil  monkeys,  then,  are  henceforward  to  be  counted  in  Eu- 
rope, viz  :  two  in  England,  the  Macacus  eocenus,  Owen,  and  the  Maca- 
cus  pliocenus,  id. ;  three  in  France,  the  Pliopithecus  antiquus,  the  Dryo- 
pithecus Fontani,  and  the  Semnopithecus  monspessulanus,  which  is 
probably  the  same  as  the  Pithecus  maritimus  of  M.  de  Christol. 
Lastly,  the  monkey  of  Pikermi,  in  Greece,  named  by  M.  A.  Wagner 
Mezopithecus  pentelicus.  M.  Gaudry  and  I  propose,  in  our  Memoir 
on  the  fossil  bones  of  Pikermi,  which  will  be  soon  presented  to  the 
Academy,  to  attach  this  monkey  to  the  group  of  Semnopitheci,  under 
the  name  of  Semnopithecus  pentelicus." 

Bones  of  the  Macrotherium,  Rhinoceros,  Dicrocerus  elegans,  &c, 
were  also  collected  at  the  same  spot,  by  M.  Fontan,  and  in  the  same 
medium  tertiary  (miocene)  deposits. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  525 

Thus,  in  one  short  month  since  this  essay  was  commenced,  advan- 
cing science  has  added  another  grand  link  to  the  chain  of  organic 
remains  which  now  connects  the  faunse  of  the  past  old  world  with 
those  of  the  present.  Already,  from  the  previously  known  fossil 
Gibbon,  not  a  far  remove  from  human  likeness,  we  have  mounted  up, 
in  the  graduated  scale  of  organization,  to  the  level  of  the  highest 
living  anthropomorphous  apes  (Orang-utan,™  Chimpanzee,  and  Go- 
rilla), through  this  precious  discovery  of  Bryopithecus  Fontani. 

It  will  opportunely  exemplify  how  prepared  really-scientific  men 
are  now,  all  over  the  woiid,  for  these  revelations  from  "  the  Book  of 
Nature — which  cannot  lie,"  to  present  here  an  extract  from  the  ad- 
dress of  my  friend  Pkof.  Riddell,  delivered  at  New  Orleans,  on  the 
25th  Feb.,  1856  —  some  six  months  before  M.  Lartet  announced  at 
Paris  this  astounding  "  confirmation." 

"  I  must  allude  in  very  general  terms  to  the  recent  progress  of 
Geology.  The  philosophical  views  of  Lyell,  respecting  the  dyna- 
mical causes  that  have  produced  the  geological  aspect  of  our  planet 
during  the  lapse  of  past  ages,  are  gaining  more  and  more  fully  the 
assent  of  the  cultivators  of  this  science.  Instead  of  evoking,  as  a 
probable  cause,  the  agency  of  imaginary  cataclysms,  or  general  and 
sudden  convulsions  of  nature,  to  explain  the  origin  of  mountain 
upheavals,  terrene  depressions,  the  petrifaction  of  organic  remains, 
the  extinction  of  successive  races  of  animals  and  plants,  the  indura- 
tion, crystallization,  and  disintegration  of  rock  strata,  Mr.  Lyell 
alleges  that  we  have  reason  to  suppose  all  these,  and  more,  have 
resulted  from  the  long-continued  agency  of  such  dynamic  causes  as 
continue  to  manifest  their  action  at  the  present  time.  In  some  in- 
stances, the  effects  produced  are  hardly  appreciable  during  the  brief 
period  of  human  life  ;  but  we  should  remember  that  the  stately  hun- 
dred years,  which  is  rarely  approached,  and  still  more  rarely  exceeded 
by  man,  when  used  as  a  measure  for  the  probable  duration  of  those 
vast  periods  of  time  occupied  in  the  production  and  modification  of 
the  numerous  successive  geological  strata,  with  their  mineral  con- 
tents and  organic  remains,  becomes,  to  our  limited  comprehension, 
a  mere  infinitesimal ;  a  quantity  too  small  to  have  assigned  to  it  any 
sensible  value  in  comparison. 

"  The  recent  period,  so  called,  now  in  progress,  contains  the  relics 
of  animals  and  plants,  of  species  essentially  identical  with  those  now 
flourishing.     It  has  been  estimated,  from  data  carefully  obtained  and 

3,6  In  Malay,  "Orang"  means  only  man,  and  is  prefixed  to  proper  names  of  all  nations; 
"  Utan,"  signifying  wild,  designates  the  "  Orang-utan"  as  the  wild  man,  which  Cbawfckd 
(Malay  Grammar  and  Dictionary,  II,  p.  123)  spells  "  Orang-utang," — its  true  Malayan  name 
being  "  Miyas."     Still  (p.  198),  "  Utan"  is  given  as  the  synonym  for  wild,  wilderness. 


526  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

unobjectionable,  that  our  Mississippi  delta,  south  of  the  latitude  ot 
Baton  Rouge,  pertaining,  of  course,  to  the  recent  period,  has  occu- 
pied no  less  a  time  than  120,000  years  in  its  formation.  The  parti- 
culars of  this  computation  I  need  not  now  trouble  you  with. 

"  It  is  a  very  common  occurrence  that  sweeping  assertions  are  made 
in  palaeontology,  based  upon  negative  data.    That  is,  because  certain 
classes  or  genera  of  organic  remains  have  not  yet  been  found  in  the 
older  fossiliferous  strata,  therefore  they  did  not  then  exist  on  the  face 
of  the  earth  or  in  its  waters.     I  think  this  practice  is  prolific  in  false 
induction  in  science.    The  present  tenants  of  our  globe  comprise  per- 
haps 500,000  species  of  animals  and  plants.     The  organic  species 
preceding  these,  in  former  ages,  were  in  all  ages  probably  just  about 
as  numerous.     Palaeontologists  have  brought  to  light,  from  about  20 
different  and  successive  fossiliferous  formations,  about  20,000  species 
of  remains,  nine-tenths  of  wbich,  as  from  the  nature  of  the  case  we 
might  expect,  are  of  marine  and  aquatic  origin.     Now,  the  plants 
and  animals  whose  remains  characterize  these  20  formations,  while 
flourishing  in  their  respective  ages,  were  probably,  in  each  of  the  20 
cases,  as  numerous  in  species  as  those  contemporary  with  us.     Aver- 
aging the  known  fossils  to  the  formations,  each  of  the  twenty  would 
have  1000  species,  which  is  only  l-500th  of  what  may  fairly  be  sup- 
posed to  have  existed.     Admitting  this  reasoning  as  valid,  two  or 
three  instructive  conclusions  would  flow  from  it.     1st.  That  doubt- 
less many  species  of  animals  and  plants  have  heretofore  existed  as 
well  as  at  present,  that  from  their  habitat  and  habit  were  rarely  or 
ever  likely  to  be  preserved  as  organic  remains.    2d.  There  is  no  pro- 
bability that  geologists  are  as  yet  acquainted  with  all,  or  even  with 
a  fiftieth  part  of  the  organic  remains  entombed  in  the  various  forma- 
tions constituting  what  may  be  called  the  rind  of  our  globe.     3d. 
Assume  at  perfect  random  any  one  species,  as  for  instance  an  animal 
analogous  to  the  Ourang-Outang,  the  probability  is  500  times  greater  that 
such  an  animal  existed  at  any  geological  age,  also  assumed  at  random, 
than  that  his  remains  will,  in  our  day,  be  found  by  geologists  in  the  cor- 
responding formations." 377 

Fossil  man,  of  some  inferior  grade,  is  now  the  only  thing  wanting 
to  complete  the  palaeontological  series  in  Europe,  in  order  at  once  to 
exhibit  bimanes  and  quadrumanes  in  parallel  fossil  development ; 
and  thereby  to  plant  the  genera  Simiadse  and  the  genus  Homo  on  one 
and  the  same  archaeological  platform.  Let  us  hope  !  "We  actually 
hold  in  our  hands  the  short  end  of  the  thread,  through  the  progna- 

s"  Annual  Address  read  before  the  New  Orleans  Academy  of  Sciences,  Feb.  25th,  1856,  by 
Prop.  J.  L.  Riddell,  University  of  Louisiana,  President  of  the  Academy,  p.  4.  [Interca- 
lated in  my  MS.,  at  Philadelphia,  25th  Jan.  1857.] 


THE     POLTGENIST  S.  527 

thous  crania  of  inferior  human  races  discovered,  in  the  humatile  phase, 
over  Belgium  and  Austria.  Science  now  lacks  but  one,  only  one, 
little  fact  more  to  terminate  forever  the  question — "have  human  fossil 
remains  been  found  ?" 

Again,  I  say,  there  is  margin  for  hope  !  May  be,  that  it  is  neither 
in  Europe  nor  in  America  that  fossil  humanity  is  to  be  sought  for. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  the  malicious  aphorism  whispered  by  Mephis- 
topheles  to  Goethe  in  "Faust,"  that  if  humanity  advances,  it  is  spi- 
rally—  might  some  day  turn  out  to  be  as  true  in  geographical  palfe- 
ontology  as  it  is  often  in  ethics,  and  oftener  in  inventions. 

Not  a  tenth  part  of  Asia,  not  a  twentieth  part  of  Africa,  has  as  yet 
been  explored  by  the  geological  pick-axe ;  the  inlands  of  Borneo, 
Sumatra,  New  Guinea,  have  not  yet  been  trodden  by  the  white  man's 
foot,  far  less  open  to  the  palseontologist.  It  is  to  scientific  mining 
and  to  I'ail-road  operations,  conducted  only  by  the  most  civilized 
races  of  the  world,  that,  within  the  present  quarter-century,  the  earth 
begins  to  yield  up  her  dead,  and  display  her  riches  in  organic  remains. 
When  the  iron  net-work,  such  as  the  "peace  of  Paris"  already  stimu- 
lates, is  spread  from  the  Neva  to  the  Amour,  from  Trebizond  to  Cal- 
cutta, from  Jerusalem  to  Aden,  from  Cape  Town  to  Lake  TTniamesi,378 
and  from  Algiers  to  the  Senegambia,  perchance  to  the  Gaboon  river, 
we  shall  doubtless  possess  many  more  fossil  monkeys,  and  (why 
not  ?)  a  fossil  man. 

Upon  the  principle  of  representation  in  the  successive  series  of  the 
faunas  of  each  zoological  zone,  it  should  be  about  Borneo  ■  that  we 
may  expect  to  dig  up  fossil  analogues  of  Orangs  and  Dyaks ;  about 
Guinea  and  Loango  those  of  Troglodytes  niger  and  of  Gtorilla-gina,  no 
less  than  of  some  human  precursors  of  present  negro  races.  And 
yet,  up  to  this  day,  ten  years  after  their  discovery,  not  a  living 
specimen m9  far  less  a  fossil  sample,  owing  to  inaccessibility  of  their 
habitats,  has  been  procurable,  even  of  the  Gorilla,  through  French 
or  other  colonists  at  the  Gaboon  ! 

Here,  I  may  be  allowed  a  digression,  —  not  altogether  irrelevant, 
because  it  aids  to  clear  up  doubts  as  to  the  earliest  contact  of  the 
Saracenic  Arabs,  after  their  conquest  of  Barbary  in  the  7th  century 
of  our  era,  with  Negro  nations ;  whom  Arabian  camels,  then  intro- 
duced  on   a  large   scale   into   northern  Africa,   first  enabled  the 

S78  Petermann,  Miliheilungen  aus  Justus  Perthes'  Geographischer  Anstall,  &c,  Gotha,  4to, 
1856;  pp.  13-32;  and  his  "Skizze  einer  Karte  *  *  *  des  See's  von  Uniamesi;" — which  later 
explorers  seem  to  doubt. 

8,9  Is.  Geoefroy  St.  Hilaire  and  Dureau  he  la  Malle,  in  Annates  des  Sciences  Nalurelles, 
Paris,  III*  se"rie,  XVI,  pp.  154-217. 


a 


528  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Prophet's  victorious  " goum-s"  [Arabic  for  "levies" — literally  get- 
ups\  to  reach  athwart  the  Sahara-deserts.  It  will  also  show  how 
invaluable  to  ethnography  are  French  translations  of  long-disre- 
garded Semitic  historians,  not  merely  those  of  the  chosen  Israelitish 
stock.     Besides,  the  work  is  little  known  to  the  "  reading  public." 

Ebn  Khaledoon  (or  Khaldun)x — the  most  erudite,  philosophic, 
and  unfortunate,381  Arabian  writer  in  Barbary  during  the  4th  and 
5th  century  —  tells  us  how,  "the  Molathemeen  [wearers  of  the 
"litham,"  muffler,  for  the  double  object  of  keeping  off  sun  and  dust 
in  the  desert,  and  of  hiding  the  face  from  enemies  —  law  of  the 
Dakheyl~],m  a  people  of  Sanhadjian  [Berber]  race,  inhabited  the 
sterile  region  that  stretches  away  into  the  midst  of  the  sandy  desert 
[Sahara].  From  immemorial  time — from  very  many  centuries  prior 
to  Islamism — they  had  continued  to  traverse  that  region  where  they 
found  everything  that  sufficed  for  their  wants.  Keeping  themselves 
thus  far  removed  from  the  'Tell'  [Arabice  hill,  i.e.,  Mount  Atlas], 
and  from  the  cultivated  country,  they  replaced  its  productions  by 
the  milk  and  flesh  of  their  camels.  Avoiding  civilized  countries, 
they  had  habituated  themselves  to  isolation  ;  and,  brave  as  ferocious, 
they  had  never  bent  beneath  the  yoke  of  foreign  dominion."  In 
short,  these  Sanhadjians  are  the  perfect  types  of  old  Roman  Numi- 
dians,  and  modern  Touariks,  —  except,  in  religion,  the  adoption  of 
Islam  for  Africanized-Punic  fetishism  —  in  language,  a  great  many 
Arabic  words  of  civilization  absorbed  into  their  Berber  speech  —  in 
zoology,  the  camel  for  the  horse  —  in  arms,  the  match-lock  for  the 
bow.     Such,  too,  were  a  cognate  tribe,  the  Lemtouna. 

"When  the  Lemtouna  had  subjugated  the  desert-regions,  they 
carried  war  amidst  negro  nations,  in  order  to  constrain  these  to 
become  Mussulmans  [just  as  we,  now-a-days,  through  missionaries, 
are  trying  to  make  Christians  of  all  peoples  who  are  not  —  in  most 
cases,  amongst  inferior  types  of  man,  only  hastening  their  ultimate 
obliteration].     A  large  portion  of  the  Blacks  then  embraced  Islam ; 

380  Histoire  des  Berberes  el  des  Dynasties  Musulmanes  de  VAfrique  Seplentrionah,  translated 
from  the  Arabic  by  the  Baeon  de  Slane,  for  account  of  the  "Ministere  de  la  Guerre;" 
vol.  I,  Algiers,  1847  ;  vol.  II,  1851.  My  exeerpta  are  taken  chiefly  from  I,  pp.  36-7,  53, 
184-5; — II,  pp.  64-70,  104-5,  106.  The  history  commences  with  the  Arab  conquest  of 
Barbary  in  the  7th  century,  and  ends  during  the  14th. 

381  Zeyd-abd-eb.-Rahman  Ebn  Ehaledoon  was  born  at  Tunis  in  1332.  After  greatly 
distinguishing  himself  at  the  courts  of  Barbaresque  princes,  he  became  Grand  Qadee 
(Judge)  of  Cairo  under  Ed-Dclher-Barqooq  in  1384 ;  when  the  vessel,  in  which  his  family 
had  embarked  on  their  way  to  him,  sunk,  —  "Thus,  one  single  blow  deprived  me  for  ever 
of  riches,  happiness,  and  children."     He  died  in  1406. 

382  Lavakd,  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  2d  Exped.,  1853,  p.  317:  —  Feesnel  (Arabes  avant 
V Tslamisme,  Paris,  1836,  p.  36),  shows  how  it  was  only  at  the  ancient  Arabian  fair  of 
Oukash,  abolished  in  first  century  Hedjra,  that  hostile  tribes  could  meet  unmvffled. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  529 

but  the  remainder  dispensed  with  it,  by  paying  the  capitation-tax 
[equally  satisfactory  to  the  Saracenic  missionary,  who  good  naturedly 
permitted  those  anti-Mohammedan  back-sliders,  or  recusants,  to 
'compound  (always  in  cash)  for  sins  they  were  inclined  to,  by 
damning  those  they  had  no  mind  to']." 

Telagaguin,  their  king,  was  grandsire  of  Aboo-Bekr-ebn-Omar, 
who  commanded  the  Elmoravidian  empire.  His  successor  Tiloutan 
conquered  the  Soudan,  "marching  surrounded  by  100,000  dromedary- 
riders  mounted  upon  Maharie  of  pure  blood ;"  and  died  in  Hedjra 
222  =  a.  d.  837.  Another  historian  says  that,  in  the  4th  century 
Hedjra,  Obeyd-Allan  had  100,000  'camels,  and  subdued  23  negro 
kings.  The  Lemtouna  even  reached  the  Senegal.  "We  know," 
comments  De  Slane,  "  that  this  river  continued,  for  a  long  time,  to 
separate  the  Berber  from  the  negro  race.383  In  the  year  1446,  when 
the  Portuguese  were  making  their  first  explorations  of  the  western 
coast  of  Africa,  the  tribes  of  the  Assanhagi  [Zanaga,  Sanhadja] 
inhabited  the  northern  bank  of  the  Senegal ;  and  the  Yalof,  or  Wolof, 
that  is  to  say,  the  Blacks,  occupied  the  other.  We  must  observe 
that  '  Senegal '  is  an  alteration  of  the  [Berber]  word  Asnaguen,  or 
Zenaguen,  plural  of  Zanag ';  that  is  to  say,  the  Sanhaja  " — one  of  the 
great  branches  of  the  quinquegentani  Berberi.3^ 

Ebn  Khaledoon  continues — "  As  for  those  who  remained  in  the 
desert,  nothing  has  changed  their  manner  of  being,  and,  even  to-day, 
they  remain  divided  and  disunited  [as  they  continue  now,  1000  years 
later].  *  *  *  They  [the  Berber  tribes]  form  a  species  of  cordon  along 
the  frontier  of  the  land  of  the  Blacks,  —  a  cordon  which  stretches 
itself  parallely  to  that  which  the  Arabs  form  upon  the  frontier  of  the 
two  Moghrebs  and  of  Ifrikia"  i385 — thus  demarcating  in  his  time,  with 

383  See  Raffenel  ( Voyages  dans  VAfrique  occidentale,  comprenant  V exploration  du  Senegal, 
&c,  1843-4,  Paris,  1846),  for  the  best  description  of  these  Senegalian  nations. 

3«  Otia,  "Berber  Tribes,"  p.  146:— Types,  pp.  510-26. 

385  Says  Ebn  Khaledoon — "  Because  it  must  not  be  thought  that  the  Arab  nomades  had 
inhabited  this  country  in  ancient  times.  It  was  only  towards  the  middle  of  the  5th  cen- 
tury of  the  Hedjra  that  Africa  was  invaded  by  bands  of  the  tribes  of  Hillah  and  that  of  So- 
leym," — and  then  not  further  west  than  the  Cyrenaica.  No  Arab  settlers  were  [aside  from 
the  Saracen  soldiery]  in  Barbary  prior  to  this  immigration,  —  except  in  the  confused  Ye- 
menite legends  of  "Tobba,  an  Arabian  king,  who  gave  his  name  to  Ifrikia ;  *  *  *  *  And 
the  reason  was  because  the  Berber  race  then  occupied  the  country,  and  prevented  the  other 
peoples  to  fix  themselves  in  it." 

Now,  this  name  Ifrikia,  borrowed  from  the  "Africa"  of  the  Latins,  possessed,  like 
"  Libya,"  a  more  restricted  geographical  extension  formerly  than  in  modern  days.  Indeed, 
nmong  the  Arabs  even  now,  Ifrikia  does  not  mean  "Africa,"  but  only  the  tract  of  country 
from  Cape  Barca  to  Tunis,  not  even  so  far  west  as  Algeria.  Owing  to  ignorance  of  this 
fact,  and  Frenchmen's  poor  acquaintance  then  with  Arabic,  the  General  who  concluded  the 
"Treaty  of  Tafna"  with  el-Hadj  Abd-el-Qader,  committed  more  diplomatic  mistakes,  in 
one  line  (the  cause  of  all  the  troubles  France  had  with  this  gallant  chieftain  till  she  cap- 

34 


530  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

the  greatest  perspicacity,  the  same  relative  topographical  positions 
in  which  the  indigenous  Atlantic  Berbers,  the  exotic  Arabs,  and  the 
negro  races,  stand  towards  each  other  at  this  day. 

Perfectly  clear  also  were  this  learned  Arab's  ethnic  views  about 
the  distinctness  of  negro  nations  from  either  Berbers  or  Arabs.  His 
"History  of  the  kings  of  the  negro  peoples  \_Soodan,  i.  e.  the 
Blacks]'  begins  thus :  "  This  portion  of  the  human  species  that  is 
composed  of  negro  populations  has,  for  dwelling-place,  the  countries 
of  the  second  climate  and  of  the  first  [His  geography  being  that  of 
Edreesee,  who,  like  the  Greeks,  imagined  that  the  African  conti- 
nent prolonged  itself  towards  the  east ;  in  order  to  form  the  southern 
limit  of  the  Indian  and  China  Seas].  *  *  *  They  occupy  these  terri- 
tories in  all  their  width,  from  the  Occident  to  the  orient.  *  *  *  The 
negro  species  subdivides  itself  into  several  races,  tribes,  and  ramifi- 
cations; of  which  the  best  known,  in  the  last,  are  the  Zendj  (natives  of 
Zanzibar  and  Mozambique),  the  Halasha  (Abyssinians),  and  the  Nouba 
(Nubians)."  He  describes  some  nineteen  peoples  of  the  black  race; 
and  relates  two  curious  facts  showing  the  danger  of  arming  negroes 
as  soldiers : — 1st,  how  in  Hedjra  252  =  A.  d.  866,  the  Zendj  "  slaves  " 
revolted  at  Basra  (Bassora,  on  the  Euphrates) : — 2nd,  how  in  Hedjra 
468,  the  corps  of  Turkish  Memlooks,  in  the  service  of  El-Mostansek, 
had  many  sanguinary  engagements,  at  Cairo,  with  the  negro  "slave" 
troops  belonging  to  the  same  Khalif.  The  Ketamians  (i.  e.  Berber, 
or  Moghrabee,  mercenaries)  ranged  themselves  on  the  side  of  the 
Memlooks;  and,  in  one  of  their  conflicts,  40,000  of  their  black  adver- 
saries were  slaughtered.  The  same  troubles  recurred  during  my 
own  time  in  Egypt,  when  Mohammed  Ali  imagined  that  he  could 
form  a  regular  army  of  negro  soldiers,  imported  as  slaves  from  the 
Belad-es-Soodan  along  the  Upper  Nile.     Out  of  some  12,000  who 

tured-him,  and  in  time  sent  him  to  Brussa,  and  afterwards,  where  he  resides  now,  to  Da- 
mascus) than  any  Plenipotentiary  ever  perpetrated  before !  Without  the  Arabic  text  it 
cannot  be  made  very  clear,  but  here  it  is  from  Pascal  Duprat  (Op.  cit.,  pp.  291-2).  The 
words  run: — "el  Ameer  Aed-el-Qadek  yi&ref  hukrn  Soollanat  Fransa  fi  Afrikeeya" — sup- 
posed by  the  French  protocol-maker  to  mean,  "  le  Prince  Abd-el-Kader  reconnait  le  gou- 
vernement  du  Eoi  des  Francais  en  Afrique."  Nothing  of  the  kind !  The  astute  Shemite 
overreached  the  Dragoman  (interpreter)  in  the  two  main  points, — 1st,  by  getting  himself 
recognized  as  an  Ameer,  prince,  when  he  was  previously  but  a  mere  hadjee,  pilgrim  to 
Mecca ;  and  2nd,  by  recognizing  French  sovereignty,  not  in  Algeria  at  all,  but  away  to 
the  eastward  (where  neither  party  had  any  rights)  in  Tunis,  Tripoli,  &c. !  This  is  the 
literal  sense — "the  prince  Abd-el-Qader  knows  the  government  of  a  king  of  France  in 
Afrikeeya  /" 

Russia  for  a  century,  France  for  twenty-five  years,  England  for  some  twenty-five  months, 
and  the  United  States  Executive  not  even  yet — have  comprehended  that  diplomatists  ought 
to  be  at  least  acquainted  with  the  vernacular  of  those  countries  to  which,  at  enormous  cost, 
and  frequent  inutility,  they  are  commissioned. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  5dl 

were  drilled  in  Upper  Egypt,  1823-5,  all  those  who  did  not  die  of 
consumption  before  the  expeditions386  sailed  to  the  Morea  (1824-5), 

386  "  Haud  obliviscendum  "  by  his  first-born  is  all  that  need  here  accompany  reference  to  my 
Father, — who  unostentatiously  manumitted,  at  Alexandria,  every  one  of  our  slaves,  between 
the  years  1821  and  1827.     This  is  a  fact  I  desire  to  speak  upon. 

John  Gliddon — born  at  Exeter,  Devonshire,  28th  February,  1784 — left  England  in  1811, 
was  a  known  Mediterranean  merchant  at  Malta  for  seven  years ;  and  thence  settling  in 
Egypt  with  his  family  (August,  1818),  became  not  unknown  for  influential  position  and 
generous  deeds  during  the  apogee  of  Mohammed  Ali's  career ;  especially  whilst  holding, 
from  1832  to  1844,  the  honorary  incumbency  of  the  U.  S;  Consulship,  first  at  Alexandria 
and  subsequently  at  Cairo.     He  died  at  Malta-Mnneena — 3d  July,  1844. 

[I  say  "honorary"  U.  S.  Consul,  for  the  especial  purpose  of  contradicting,  once  and  for- 
ever, one  of  many  other  falsehoods  printed  last  summer,  viz:  "  Our  first  Consul- General  in 
Egypt  was  a  Yorkshireman,  who  owed  the  station  to  missionary  patronage.  He  received 
82000  a  year,  and  was  free  to  continue  his  own  vocation  as  a  merchant." 

The  anonymous,  though  by  myself  unmistakeable,  signature  of  a  "  Traveler  "  more  noto- 
rious for  ubiquity  than  for  veraciousness  or  discretion, — taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
coincidence  that  his  lies  found  utterance  in  a  "daily"  whose  head  manager  and  editorial 
principles  are  too  vile  for  durable  advertisement  from  my  own  pen — render  it  merely  neces- 
sary here  to  record  that,  in  the  North  American  (Philadelphia,  February  10,  1847),  may  be 
found  a  "Letter"  of  mine,  setting  forth,  then  as  now,  all  relations  of  Gum>ox-prenomina 
with  the  various  administrations  of  the  United  States  during  my  lifetime,  so  far.  Speaking 
merely  as  an  ethnologist,  I  myself  have  only  read  or  heard  of,  and  never  cared  about,  what 
executive  may  have  happened  to  strut,  quadrennially,  over  the  Washingtonian  platforms. 
Each  of  us  felt  proud  to  serve  the  United  Slates;  none  of  us  being  ever  minions  of  a  faction. 
The  pending  Congressional  committee  of  investigation  into  "Lobby"  membership  (amply 
commented  on  in  the  New  York  Herald,  Dec.  1856-Feb.  1857),  absolves  me  from  adding 
my  experiences  of  political  probity  in  "Uncle  Sam's"  domain.  I  will,  therefore,  merely 
challenge  contradiction,  at  the  United  States'  State  Department,  of  these  facts,  viz :  that 
my  Father  for  1 2,  myself  for  8,  my  brother  William  for  2,  my  brother-in-law  Alexander  Tod  for 
6,  and  all  of  us  during  17  years  that  we  upheld  gratuitously  the  honor  of  the  flag  in  Egypt, 
ever  received  compensation,  personally,  in  a  single  United  States'  "red  cent."  We  have 
severally  been  the  mere  channels  of  payment  (less  than  $500  a  year  at  Alexandria,  during 
perhaps  17, —  and  far  less  than  another  $500  per  annum  at  Cairo  during  3  years),  to  native 
employe's  whom  the  State  Department's  "  printed  regulations "  compelled  us  to  maintain 
and  stipend  for  the  United  States'  service  in  that  Pashalic.  On  the  contrary,  there  hang  on 
file,  at  the  State  Department  (as  mentioned  in  the  North  American  aforesaid),  documents  to 
prove  that,  were  equity  in  Congress  not  notoriously  measured  by  the  ratio  of  discounts  to 
intermedia,  "Uncle  Sam"  really  owes,  and  ought  to  pay,  my  Father's  estate  something  over 
$2000  at  this  moment,  interests  for  20  years  exclusive,  —  which  claim,  now  as  formerly,  I 
hereby  abandon  to  the  fate  of  "Amy  Darden's  horse."] 

We  landed  in  Egypt  before  the  "  Emancipation  Act,"  which  has  ruined  the  British  West 
Indies,  was  passed ;  wherefore  my  Father  then  considered  it  no  sin  to  purchase,  for  domes- 
tication, such  slaves  as  suited  our  family  requirements.  The  first  was,  1819,  Falima — nurse 
to  my  lamented  brother  Charles  (died  suddenly  of  cholera  at  Dacca,  Bengal,  27th  Nov. 
1840) — a  reddish-black  Galla-girl,  rivalling  the  Venus  de  Medicis  in  form  and  strikingly  in 
face, — -but  with  long,  soft,  wavy  hair,  small  mouth;  in  short,  no  negress.  She  was 
freed  and  married  out  in  1821,  dying  shortly  after  of  the  plague.  The  next  were,  1822, 
Falima  and  Seyda,  Dar-foor  negresses,  and  a  fine  negro  boy  named  Murgian  (i.  e.  .Wargaritus, 
coral).  The  former  two  were  emancipated,  dowried  and  married  out  in  1823,  owing  to  the 
departure  of  my  mother  to  place  three  of  us  at  school  in  England.  The  latter,  after  being 
taught  reading  and  writing,  baptized  and  vaccinated,  underwent,  at  the  age  of  puberty, 


532  THE     M  0  N  0  G  E  N  I  S  T  S     AND 

none  came  back  (1828),  except  a  few  miserable  sukkat  Mies  (invalided 
veterans)  wbo,  for  a  few  years,  lingered  as  bousebold  guards  about 
tbe  hareem-door  of  Ibrabeem  Pasba  at  Kasr-ed-Doobara,  until  tbe 
plague  of  1835  ("  quseque  ipse  miserima  vidi")  swept  tbem  off. 
together  witb  almost  all  tbe  negro  slaves  and  Nubians  (Baralera), 
then  in  Lower  Egypt.387  During  five  months  that  (1828-9)  I  so- 
journed at  Navarino  and  Modon,  skeletons  of  some  of  these  unfor- 
tunates, recognizable  by  tatters  of  their  uniforms,  frequently  fell  (in 
continual  rides  and  shooting  excursions)  in  my  way,  while  graves 
of  the  remainder  lay  alongside  the  Modon  road  for  miles. 

If  the  opinions  of  those  alone  qualified  to  decide  be  taken,  all 
the  families  of  Atalantic,  or  Gsetulian,  stock  are  terrce-geniti.388 

"  The  Berbers,"  says  De  Slane,  "  autochthonous  people  of  northern 
Africa,  are  the  same  race  that  is  now  designated  by  the  name  of 
KaUles.     This    word,   which    signifies    '  clan'    [in    Arabic,    plural 

that  constitutional  change  from  intelligence  and  gentleness  to  stupid  ferocity  which,  in 
Egypt,  prevents  everybody,  but  Turkish  officials  who  possess  soldiery,  from  keeping  adult 
negro  male  slaves  in  households.  Murgian  abjured  Christ  and  turned  Muslim,  became  too  res- 
tive for  mild  control, — and  finally  (1824),  becoming  infatuated  with  a  Nizhm-jezeed  regiment 
of  negroes  about  to  embark  for  the  war  in  the  Morea,  my  father  gave  him  his  liberty.  He 
sailed  and,  like  his  comrades,  never  came  back.  Four  more  negro  girls  were  purchased  on 
my  mother's  return  to  Alexandria  (1825) ;  but,  being  absent  in  England  myself  at  that 
time,  I  do  not  recollect  the  names  of  3,  and  they  were  already  free  and  married  off  on  my 
return  in  June,  1827, —  as  was  the  fourth,  Barbara,  in  July  of  the  same  year.  Her  place 
was  re-filled  by  a  Christian  white  slave,  bought  ont  of  compassion  from  the  Turkish  soldiery, 
in  the  basaar,  when  hundreds  of  Greek  captives  were  ravished  from  the  Morea,  to  become, 
in  portion,  rescued,  through  Count  de  St.  Leger  and  Captain  Coddrington,  1828;  as,  indeed, 
two  others  were  by  myself  at  Cairo  in  1832,  and  sent  home.  Our  lady's  maid,  Pasquala, 
free  from  the  hour  she  touched  my  father's  threshhold,  married  out  in  1828;  and  thus  in 
that  year  ended  our  family  connection  with  slavery ;  although  a  silly  tourist  (Dr.  Holt 
Yates),  hospitably  entertained  by  my  father  at  Alexandria  in  1828-9,  has  fabricated  for 
his  book  an  affecting  tale  about  the  influence  of  an  "Abyssinian  slave  girl"  over  one  of  my 
sisters ! 

In  justice  to  my  parents'  memory  I  ought  to  state  that,  in  common  with  others  at  that 
emancipation-period,  they  then  renounced  the  further  possession  of  slaves  "for  conscience' 
sake;" — sentiments  in  which  I  never  have  participated;  because  I  consider  it  a  far  more 
philanthropic  act  (whatever  "Exeter-hall"  may  think  of  it),  to  rescue  by  purchase  any 
human  being  — especially  semi-wild  negroes,  when  their  humanization  is  the  natural  conse- 
quence —  from  the  brutal  clutches  of  the  gellilb  (slave-fetcher),  than  either  to  abandon  him 
or  her  amid  the  horrors  of  an  Oriental  slave-mart,  or  to  let  him  or  her  run  the  risk  of  not 
obtaining  a  better  master. 

"  So  then,"  as  St.  Paul  (Ep.  to  the  Romans,  XIV,  12, — Sharpe's  N.  T.,  p.  303)  has  clearly 
expressed  it,  "  each  of  us  shall  give  account  of  himself  to  God ;"  nor  is  the  Father  account- 
able, in  this  case,  for  a  difference  of  ethical  opinions  in  his  son. 

387  There  is  a  note  of  mine  on  this  subject  in  my  friend  Dr.  Barton's  Report  of  the  Sani- 
tary Commission  of  New  Orleans,  1854.     See  also  Nott's  Chap.  IV,  p.  393,  ante. 

388  For  all  former  authorities,  see  Gliddon,  Otia  ^Egyptiaca,  1849,  "Excursus  on  the 
origin  of  some  of  the  Berber  tribes  of  Nubia  and  Libya,"  pp.  116-46: — and  Types  of 
Mankind,  1854,  pp.  180-1,  204-10,  510  "Ludlm,"  to  526. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  -533 

KabciiT],  has  not  been  employed  to  designate  the  Berbers  earlier 
than  about  three  centuries.  The  introduction  of  this  distorted 
meaning  must  probably  be  attributed  to  the  Turks,"389 — who  entered 
Algiers  under  Barbarossa  at  the  beginning  of  the  16th  century. 

Inasmuch  as  great  confusion  prevails  yet  in  the  minds  of  other- 
wise well-informed  ethnographers  upon  Berber  subjects,  and  my 
object  being  now  to  separate  these  races  of  the  Hamitic  type  of 
mankind,  entirely  from  any  affinity  with  more  austral  negro  nations, 
unknown  to  the  Berbers  before  the  introduction  of  camels390  —  a 
few  extracts  from  the  French  "Exploration  scientifique  de  l'Alge- 
rie"391are  here  introduced. 

The  uplands  and  the  aborigines  of  Berberia  (true  name  for 
Barbary)  are  likened  by  Carette,  in  their  geological  phenomena  and 
their  human  vicissitudes,  to  an  Archipelago  subject  to  rising  and 
falling  tides:  — "the  scarped  islands  are  the  mountainous  masses; 
the  flat  islands  are  the  Oases ; 3M  the  secular  tides  are  the  invasions. 
All  these  islands  represent  different  groups  of  the  same  nation ; 
whereas  the  wave  that  bathes  them  is  by  turns  Phoenician,  Roman, 
Vandal,  Greek,  Arab,  Turkish,"  —  and,  at  this  moment,  French. 
All  these  have  carried  away  some  Berber,  and  left  some  foreign 
words.  Nevertheless,  the  old  lingua  Atlantica  is  still  recoverable ; 
at  the  same  time  (as  I  have  elsewhere  indicated)  all  its  words  of 
moral  and  intellectual  civilization,  altogether  wanting  in  Berber, 
have  been  absorbed  from  the  Arabic,  —  from  which  the  Berber 
vocabulary  and  grammatical  construction,  by  monogenists  supposed 
to  be  "  Syro- Arabian,"  is  now  proved  to  be  absolutely  distinct. 

Under  the  head  of  "Distinctive  characteristics  of  the  Berber 
tongue,"  our  Author  points  out  that  the  strongest  difference  between 
the  Arabs  and  the  Kabciil  of  Mt.  Atlas  lies  in  their  languages  — 
"c'est  M  surtout  qui  en  fait  deux  nations  distinctes."  Arabic  words, 
when  adopted  by  Berbers,  undergo  great  changes,  and  these  people 
understand  as  little  of  an  Arabic  discourse  as  a  French  one;  at  the 
same  time  that  it  is  easier  for  an  Arab  to  acquire  French  than 

389  Op.  cil.,  preface,  p.  1. 

390  Amply  confirmed,  from  the  latest  sources,  by  Vivien  de  St.  Martin,  "  L'Exploration 
scientifique  de  l'Afrique  centrale,"  Revue  Contemporaine,  Paris,  15th  Sept.  1855,  pp.  435-6. 

391  "Pendant  les  Annies  1840,  1841,  1842,  publige  par  ordre  du  Gouvernement,  et  avee 
le  concours  d'un  Commission  Aeadgmique,"  4to,  many  vols.,  1848-53,  Paris,  Imprim^rie 
nationale  (now  imp^riale).  My  selections  are  made  chiefly  from  Carette,  Eludes  sur  la 
Kabilie  proprement  dite  (I,  pp.  13,  20-33)  —  Precis  historique  (pp.  447-62)  —  and  Recherches 
sur  VOrigine  et  les  migrations  des  Principales  Tribus  de  l'Afrique  Septentrionule,  et  parliculiere- 
ment  de  V  Algerie  (III,  pp.  13-25,  27-55,  301-6,  441,  476). 

392  Lucidly  explained  from  the  accounts  of  Richardson,  Barth,  Overweg,  and  Voqel, 
as  regards  the  Tripoli  tan  route  over  the  Sahara,  by  St.  Martin,  op.  cit.,  pp.  430-6,  440-6. 


534  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Kabaylee :  whilst  the  Kahyle  mountaineer,  in  bringing  his  produce 
to  market,  has  much  more  need  of  Arabic  than  an  Algerian  Arab 
has  of  Berber.393 

"Albeit,  there  exist  whole  tribes  who  present  the  bilingual  cha- 
racter. But,  among  such  septs  the  principal  localities  almost  always 
bear  names  of  Berber  origin ;  which  seems  to  announce  that,  upon 
these  different  points,  the  Kabail  had  originally  possessed  the  soil. 
The  existence  of  these  double -languaged  populations  expresses, 
therefore,  nothing  else  than  the  transition  between  the  primitive 
stratum,  formed  out  of  the  Kabyle  element,  and  the  alluvial  stratum, 
formed  out  of  the  Arabic  element.  *  *  * 

"  Two  incontestable  facts  are  the  following,  viz  :  prior  even  to  the 
most  ancient  of  invasions  [the  Pnnico-Canaanitish  ?],  there  existed, 
along  this  part  of  the  African  coast,  a  people  and  an  idiom  differing 
from  all  those  peoples,  and  from  all  those  idioms,  which  were  to 
succeed  each  other  during  2000  years;  and  that,  now-a-days,  the 
last  [French]  invasion  finds  again,  in  this  country,  a  people  and  an 
idiom  different  from  all  those  which  preceded  it." 

The  well-known  "monument  of  Dugga"  contained  7  lines  in 
Phoenician,  and  7  others  in  an  unknown  writing.  After  the  French 
occupation  (1830),  abundant  bilingual  inscriptions  were  found, — 
sometimes  Latin,  at  others  Punic ;  but  ever  accompanied  by  the 
same  unintelligible  characters.  The  Berber  alphabet,  observed  by 
Oudnet  in  1822,  advanced  by  De  Saulct  in  1844,  and  recovered  by 
Brissonnet  in  1845,  has  aided  to  unfold  a  great  fact,  viz :  "  the 
examination  of  these  documents  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  close 
relationship  that  exists  between  the  idiom  of  these  antique  inscrip- 
tions and  that  other  idiom  now  being  spoken  from  the  Egyptian 
Oasis  of  Seewah  (westwards)  to  the  shore  of  the  Ocean,  and  (south- 
wards) from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  confines  of  the  Soodan 
(negro-lands).  Hence  the  secular  filiation  of  the  Libyan  tongue  has 
revealed  itself, —  a  tongue  poor  and  simple,  of  which  the  type  has 
perpetuated  itself  in  the  present  idiom  of  the  Kabail,  athwart  the 
course  of  ages  and  the  vicissitudes  of  revolutions;  without  any 
other  parchment  than  the  surface  of  desert-rocks,  without  any  other 
means  of  conservation  than  the  vis  inertise  of  tradition  ; — now  known 
by  the  several  names  of  Berber,  CJiaweeya,  or  Kabyle;  which 
becomes  a  dialect  called  Lar'oua  in  parts  of  the  Sahara,  and  Shil- 
heeya  on  the  Atlas  range. 

393  For  the  topographical  distribution  of  these  clans,  see  the  excellent  "  Carte  de 
l'Algerie  divisee  par  Tribus,"  by  Cakette  and  Warniek,  Paris,  1846: — also,  Wilhelm 
Ober.  Muller,  Atlas  ethno-geographique,  "  Les  pays  et  les  peuples  *  *  *  de  la  Berberie 
dans  leur  gtat  actuel,"  Paris  and  Leipzig  (Brockhaus  and  Avernarius). 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  535 

"  The  different  names  under  which  this  idiom  presents  itself  are 
recognized  in  a  common  appellative,  as  if  forming  hranches  of  one 
and  the  same  trunk.  The  word  Berber  comprises  equally  the  Kabail 
of  the  littoral,  the  Chaweeya  of  the  south-east,  the  Shilheeya  of  Mo- 
rocco, the  Beni-M'zab,  and  the  Touariks :  and,  in  the  same  manner 
that, all  these  dialects  offer  but  slight  differences  among  themselves, 
leaving  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  their  community  of  origin,  so  the 
peoples  that  make  use  of  them  must  be  regarded  as  the  scattered 
members  of  one  and  the  same  family."  On  the  Jurjura  plateaux 
there  is  a  tribe  still  called  (beni,  Arabic  for  "sons")  Beni-Kebila; 
another  on  the  Aures  is  (owlad,  =  "  children  ")  Oued-Shelih,  ov  Shil- 
heeya; and  a  third,  Beni-Berber :  and  thus,  without  break  in  the  chain 
of  nomenclature,  we  can  now  ascend, — in  the  same  language,  race, 
and  country — from  the  T-Amazirg,  or  Amazirg-T,  or  "  Free-men," 
name  given  by  this  people  to  themselves,394  through  the  Mazee-eh  of 
Arab  authors,  to  the  G-entes  Mazicse  of  the  Romans,  —  and  thence, 
finally  to  the  Maj-usj  of  Herodotus,  in  whose  day  they  were  /3ap^apoi ; 
that  is  to  say,  not  barbarians  etymologically,  but  these  same  old  Ber- 
beroi,  our  "Berbers." 

From  the  earliest  times,  when  they  were  the  "  Jow-country  "  and 
the  "  nme-5ow-countries "  of  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  of  the  XTTth 
dynasty,  22  centuries  b.  c,  through  the  period  when  they  had  become 
the  Misulani,  Saboubares,  and  quinquegentani  of  Latin  writers,  these 
Berbers  have  ever  been  the  same  "  unconquerable  Moors  {Mauri) ;" 
to  such  degree,  that  their  highland  fastnesses  amid  the  Atlas  were 
designated  as  "  mons  ferratus "  by  the  Boman  legions,  and  "  el- 
adoowa"  (the  inimical)  by  the  later  Saracenic  lancers  — 

"(Gens)  torva,  ferox,  procax,  verbosa,  rebellis."395 

My  above  allusion  to  the  familiar  hieroglyphics  for  Libyan  nations 
prompts  reference  to  new  inquiries  that  have  just  arisen  as  to  the 
question — How  far  did  the  pharaonic  Egyptians  push  their  conquests 
into  "Western  Africa  ?  Manetho396  says  that  Menes  (1st  dynasty,  b.  c. 
40  centuries)  gained  glory  from  his  foreign  wars ;  and  that  under  !Ne- 
cherochis  (Hid  dynasty),  not  very  long  after,  the  "Libyans  were 
defeated  by  the  Egyptians :"  but,  until  recently,  no  corroborative  tes- 
timonies had  been  suspected,  even,  in  Barbary  itself.  The  first  dis- 
covery of  such  monumental  analogy  was  made  by  the  daring  travel- 

394  Hodgson  (of  Savannah,  Ga.),  cited  in  Gliddon,  Otia  JEgyptiaca,  pp.  117-29. 

395  As  GtBBON  somewhere  says  of  the  Armoricans :  or,  in  the  more  explicit  Castilian  of 
a  wrathy  old  Spanish  writer,  not  partial  to  Mussulmans,  Hsdo,  —  "  Moros,  Alarbes,  Ca- 
bayles,  y  algunos  Turcos,  todos  gente  puerca,  suzia,  torpe,  indomita,  inhavil,  inhumana, 
bestial ;  y  por  tanto,  tuvo  por  cierto  razon  el  que  da  pocos  anos  aca  acustumbro  llamar  a 
esta  tierra  Barbaria"  (Pascal  Duprat,  Afrique  Seplentrionale,  1845,  p.  65,  note). 

396  Text  in  Bcnsen,  Egypt*  Place,  i  pp.  611,  615. 


536  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

lers,  Richardson,  Barth,  and  Overweg,397  in  1850 ;  at  a  mountain-pass 
called  Wadee  Taldja,  about  nine  days'  journey  after  leaving  Mour- 
zook,  the  capital  of  Eezzan.  Here  is  the  account,  in  the  words  of 
M.  Vivien  de  Saint-Martin  : — 

"A  little  before  reaching  the  descent  we  have  just  described,  at 
the  bottom  of  the  valley  through  which  one  arrives  at  it,  our  travel- 
lers made  a  singular  discovery.  They  found  some  figures  engraved 
in  deep  cuttings  upon  the  face  of  the  rock  [a  very  Egyptian  method 
of  recording  conquests,  as  at  "Wadee  Magara,  near  Mt.  Sinai,  by 
steles]-  The  ancient  people  of  the  East  loved  thus  to  sculpture,  upon 
the  granite,  warlike  or  religious  scenes :  there  exist  tableaux  of  this 
nature  in  Assyria  and  in  Media,  in  Phoenicia  and  Asia  Minor. 
Those  which  our  explorers  have  discovered  at  the  entrance  of  the 
[Sahara]  desert  have  a  peculiar  character.  They  form  several  dis- 
tinct tableaux,  of  which  two  are  above  all  remarkable.  One  offers 
an  allegorical  scene,  the  other  represents  a  scene  of  pastoral,  life. 
In  the  first,  one  beholds  two  personages,  one  with  the  head  of  a  bird, 
and  the  other  with  a  bull's,  both  armed  with  buckler  and  bow,  and 
seemingly  combating  for  the  possession  of  a  bull :  the  other  shows  a 
group  of  bulls  that  appear  descending  towards  a  spring  to  slake  their 
thirst.  The  first  of  these  two  tablets  has  a  character  altogether  Egyp- 
tian ;  and  the  ensemble  of  these  sculptures  is  very  superior  to  what 
the  nomad  inhabitants  of  the  north  of  Africa  could  now  execute  [See 
Pulszky's  Chap.  II. ,  pp.  188-192,  on  "  TJnartistical  Eaces  "].  The 
men  of  the  neighborhood,  moreover,  attribute  them  to  an  unknown 
people  who,  they  say,  possessed  the  country  long  before  them. 
Barth  copied  with  care  the  two  principal  tablets,  and  he  sent  his 
drawings,  accompanied  with  a  detailed  notice,  to  the  learned  Egyp- 
tologist of  London,  Mr.  Birch ;  who  will  doubtless  make  them  the 
object  of  a  serious  study.  According  to  the  very  competent  judg- 
ment of  the  traveller,  the  sculptures  of  Wadee  Telissareh  [name  of 
the  place  where  they  are  found]  bear  in  themselves  the  stamp  of 
incontestable  antiquity.  One  is  struck,  furthermore,  by  a  character- 
istic circumstance,  viz :  the  absence  of  the  camel,  which  always  holds 
nowadays  the  first  place  in  the  clumsy  sketches  [as  at  Mt.  Sinai] 
traced,  here  and  there,  by  present  tribes  upon  other  rocks  in  divers 
parts  of  the  desert.  It  is  now  recognized  that  the  camel  was  intro- 
duced into  Africa  by  the  first  Arab  conquerors  of  the  Khalifate  [this 
is  not  exact — say  rather  about  the  1st  century  e.  c],  during  the  VLTth 
century  of  our  era :  more  anciently  the  only  caravan  beasts  of  bur- 
then, between  the  maritime  zone  and  ISTigritia,  were  the  ox  and  the 

39'  Gumprecht,  Barth  und  Overwegs  Untersuchungs-Reise  nach  dem  Tschad-See,  Berlin, 
1852; — as  cited  by  Saint-Martin,  (supra,  note  390)  pp.  434-5. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  537 

horse.  Strabo  relates  (lib.  xvii.)  how  the  Maurusians  [only  a  dialec- 
tic mutation  of  JPharusians,  the  PTyRSIM398  of  Xth  Genesis],  in 
order  to  traverse  the  desert,  suspended  water-skins  under  the  bellies 
of  their  horses.  Among  several  tribes  of  the  Sahara,  the  ox  is  still 
used  as  a  beast  of  transportation  and  carriage.  Richardson  saw  a 
great  number  of  them  in  a  caravan  that  had  just  crossed  a  part  of 
the  Soodan." 

A  sight  of  Earth's  copy  would  suffice  to  establish  whether  a  breath 
of  Egyptian  art  passed  over  the  sculpture ;  but  this  narration  is  all  I 
can  now  learn  about  it.  Isolate  iu  itself,  this  fact  scarcely  attracted 
my  attention  before ;  but  here  come  some  fresher  coincidences  of  real 
Egyptian  monuments,  still  further  west  in  Barbary,  that  shed  some 
plausibility  upon  these  (by  myself  unseen)  petroglyphs.  An  Egyp- 
tian black-granite  royal  statue,  broken,  'tis  true,  beating  inscriptions 
with  the  name  of  Thotmes  I  (XVIIth  dynasty,  16th  century  b.  a), 
has  turned  up  at  Cherchel,  in  Algeria ; 3"  and  a  Phoenico-Egyptian 
scarabaeus,  brought  from  the  same  locality,  is  now  in  Paris.400  Now, 
as  the  cited  scholars  both  coincide,  those  monuments  may  have  been 
carried  thither  either  by  Phoenician  traders,  or  by  later  Roman  dilet- 
tanti. Neither  of  them  proves  anything  for  pharaonic  conquests  in 
Africa ;  but  we  have  lived  to  see,  in  the  case  of  Egyptian  conquests 
in  Assyria,  such  positive  evidence  grow  out  of  the  smallest,  and,  at 
first,  most  dubious  indication,  that  I  feel  tempted  to  add  another, 
inedited,  fact  (long  unthought  of  in  my  portfolio)  to  the  chain  of 
posts  —  epoclias  left  aside  —  now  existing  between  ancient  Egypt  and 
old  Mauritania. 

On  the  26th  Dec,  1842,  my  revered  friend,  the  late  Hon.  John 
Pickering:  —  a  most  scientific  philologist  —  of  Boston,  gave  me  an 
impression401  of  a  fragment  of  true  Egyptian  greenish-basalt  stone, 
inscribed  with  some  sixteen  or  eighteen  pure  hieroglyphical  charac- 
ters (without  cartouche,  but  broken  from  a  statue,  part  of  an  arm 
being  on  its  reverse,  in  good  relievo).  This  was  said  to  have  been 
picked  up  on  the  ruins  of  Carthage,  by  an  officer  of  the  U.  S.  Navy, 
during  the  Tripolitan  war;  and  brought  directly  to  this  country, 

398  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  518-20. 

399  Greene,  Bulletin  Archeologique  de  I 'Athenceum  Francois,  May,  1858,  pp.  38-9. 

400  Francois  Lenormant,  op.  oil.,  June,  pp.  46-7. 

401  Mislaid  among  old  papers,  I  have  no  leisure  now  to  search  for  it ;  hut,  from  an  entry 
made  at  the  time  in  my  "  Analecta  iEgyptiaca,"  I  can  state  that  its  dimensions  were  about, 
length  7  inches,  breadth  4J,  and  thickness  2.  The  hieroglyphics,  intaglio,  style  Saitic,  are 
cut  on  a  sort  of  jamb  or  plinth.  Until  production  of  my  copy,  let  me  terminate  with  a  note 
made  on  its  reception: — "  If  it  does  not  go  in  support  of  the  conquests  of  the  Pharaohs  in 
Barbary,  it  proves  intercourse,  at  least,  with  Carthage"  —  that  is,  if  found  at  Carthage,  for 
which  I  fear  all  proofs  are  now,  after  so  many  years,  obliterated. 


538 


THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 


where,  when  I  saw  it,  the  relic  was  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  George 
Folsom,  at  Boston. 

From  this  archaeological  digression,  let  us  return  to  Barbaresque 
ethnography. 

In  the  words  of  Ebn  Ejhaledoon,  M.  Carette  observes  — "  That 
which  is  beyond  doubt  is,  that,  many  centuries  before  Islamism,  the 
Berbers  were  known  in  the  countries  they  inhabit;  and  that  they 
have  always  formed,  with  tbeir  numerous  ramifications,  a  nation 
entirely  distinct  from  every  other."  Adopting  for  himself  the  only 
natural  theory,  that  the  Berbers  were  created  for  Berberia,  Carette 
continues:  —  "Thus,  it  is  an  Arab  writer,  and  the  most  judicious  of 
the  whole  of  them,  that  has  himself  done  justice  to  all  the  tattle 
invented  by  his  co-religionists,402  and  who  reduces  all  the  system  of 
Berber  genealogy  to  two  facts,  viz. :  the  biblical  datum,  which  his 
quality  of  Mussulman  obliged  him  to  admit ;  and  the  local  tradition 
that  he  had  been  able  to  collect  himself."  The  following  tables 
specify  the  state  of  Berber  actualities. 


"  The  Kabail  lie  at  the  north,".. 


"  The  Shilloohs  and  the  Berbers  f  Shillouhs, 
stand  at  the  south  —  the  first- j 
named  west,  the  latter  east."    [Berbers, 


"The  Chaweeya  are  at  the  cen- 
tre." 


Tongues  and  Dialects. 

KtWUiea, ( Inhabit  "  the  northern  region  ol 

1     the  Barbaresque  continent." 


Slrilheeya,  "1 

t  Lar'oua, 
\  Zendtcta, 


Shawefya, . 


Shillouhs. 


f  Inhabit  "  the  southern   portion 
1     of  the  empire  of  Morocco." 
Inhabit  the  south  part  of  Algeria, 
Tunis,  Tripoli,  and  Saharan 
deserts. 
Inhabit  the  ocean  coast  in  Cen- 
tral  Morocco,  the   northerly 
section   of  the    Atlas   ohain, 
and,  in  Algeria,  the  zones  of 
"  landes"  and  the  mountain- 
ous  interior. 


Arab  origin.  Berber  origin.      Total. 
,800,000  7,500,000      12,300,000. 


In  3  centuries  the  true  Arab  population  has  scarcely  changed. 

Population. 

XVIth  century 4,650,000 

XlXth      " 4,800,000 


To  render  more  perspicuous  these  ethnic  subdivisions  of  a  group 
of  races  hitherto  very  imperfectly  discussed  by  Anglo-Saxon  ethno- 
logists, I  append,  from  another  good  authority,  long  resident  profes- 
sionally in  military  Algerian  service,403  a  curious  specification  of  their 
several  characteristics. 


402  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  512. 

403  Bertherand,  Medicine  et  Hygiene  des  Arabes,  Paris,  1855,  p.  173.  The  same  observer 
adds,  when  describing  hair  in  the  physical  characteristics  of  these  three  types  (p.  181) : 
"Les  Arabes  sont  ge'ne'ralment  bruns,  les  Saharaonis  blonds  ou  mieux  chatain-clair,  les 
Kabyles  chatain:  quelques-unes  de  lenrs  tribus  comptent  des  families  en  tierement  blondes." 
Equally  good  specifications  are  in  Pascal  Duprat  (op.  cit.)  passim. 


THE     POLTGENISTS. 


539 


BERTHERAND'S  division  of  the  present  native  inhabitants  op  ALGERIA. 


The  "  Kabttjb," 

(Correctly,  Berber,) 

Inhabits  the  mountains  (Atlas). 


The  Arab, 
(Originally  Asiatic,) 
Inhabits  the  "Tell,"  hillocks, and 
marshy  plains. 

Lives  on  cereals,  melons,  couscous 
(flour -pellets),  and  little  meat. 

Tends  to  numerous  markets;  pos-         Owns  no  fondooqs ;  comes  above 
sesses  fondooqs  (farms);   cultivates      all  to  the  Arab's  marts,  having  few 
cereals  himself;  works  at  mining; 
makes  honey ;  traffics  in  fruits. 


The  "  Sahara vn," 
(Man  of  the  Sahara,) 
Inhabits    the    Oases,    and 
sandy  lands  of  the  south. 


Eats  many  oily  cakes,  and  fruits.         Dates  and  milk. 


the   cereals;   has  varied   merchan- 
dize, —  coffee,  sugar,  soap,  Ac. 

Robbery  abundant. 

Occupies  a  country  little  wooded. 

Filthy;  often  in  need  of  water. 


Has  horses,  herds  of  cattle,  cows; 
flocks  of  sheep  and  goats. 

Dwells  in  tents. 


Bilioso-lymphatie ; 
women. 


large- bellied 


Agriculturist;    laboring  on    the 
land  winter  and  summer. 

Intelligence — very  ordinary. 


Crimes  abundant. 
Country  full  of  forests. 
Has  always  water. 

Possesses  chiefly  mules. 

Resides  in  goorbi  (mud  hovels); 
hands  ever  in  splash. 

Bilioso-sanguineous ;  women  tall 
and  well  made. 

Arboriculturist ;    works    during 
the  fruit-harvest. 

Intelligence — applied  to  arts  and 
industry. 


Always  in  motion  about  the 
"Tell;"  has  no  fondooqs ;  sells  hi3 
dates;  is  generally  poor. 

Above  all,  a  plunderer. 

Has  no  wood  except  in  the  Oases. 

Tolerably  dirty ;  often  in  want 
of  water,  even  for  legal  (Muslim) 
ablutions. 

Owns  camels  and  horses. 


Lives   in  camel-hair  tabernacles; 
earth-houses  in  the  Oases. 

Bilioso-nervous;  pretty  women. 


Horticulturist ;     gathers    dates ; 
passes  life  in  caravans. 

Great  facility  of  conception — very 
lively  imagination. 


"It  is  to  be  remarked,  that  the  Kooloogleesm  [now  fast  running 
out],  product  of  unions  between  indigenous  females  and  the  Turks 
[no  longer  encroaching  colonists  in  Algeria  since  the  Gallic  occupa- 
tion], are  the  strongest,  the  most  intelligent  [naturally  so,  because, 
under  the  name  "  Turk"  is  included  what  little  now  remains  there 
of  European  captives,  Circassian  memlooks,  &c] :  an  important 
question  as  regards  the  fusion,  —  on  which  certainly  depends  the 
implantation  of  the  French  nation  in  Algeria." 

Inasmuch,  however,  as  my  purpose  is  merely  to  direct  ethnological 
attention  towards  analysis  of  the  several  primitive  stocks,  out  of 
which  the  present  Algerian  population  is  compounded,  I  need  now 
only  interpose  a  "caveat"  in  respect  to  the  opinions  of  Dr.  Berth e- 
rand,  and  before  him  of  Dr.  Bodichon,405  as  to  the  ulterior  benefits, 
by  both  of  these  skilful  authors  supposed  likely  to   become  the 

404  In  their  Frenchified  cognomen,  philologists  "will  be  inclined  to  recognize  the  Osmanlee- 
Turkish  radical  "oGLu,"  that  is  to  say  "son,"  —  as  in  the  Laz-oglus  of  Nubia.  Pascal 
Duprat  (Afrique  Septentrionale,  1845,  pp.  238-9),  while  showing  that  it  is  as  often  pro- 
nounced Courogli  as  Goulogli,  derives  it  from  the  Turkish  kooleh-oglu,  "  son  of  a  slave:"  to 
which  may  be  added  from  Rozet  (Regence  d' Alger,  1833,  II,  pp.  272-92),  that  these  Kool- 
ooglees,  nevertheless,  are  not  half-breeds  between  Turks  and  Christian  white  female  cap- 
tives, "but  children  born  from  native  Mauresque  women  married  to  Turks." 

4°s  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  106-7,  110,  374. 


540  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

future  sequences  of  amalgamation  between  "types"  so  often  repug- 
nant, and  amid  "races"  not  less  (in  zoological,  geographical,  and 
historical,  phenomena)  diverse. 

Thus  then,  Ebn  Khaledoon  recognized  the  same  three  distinct 
types  of  man  we  find  about  North-western  Africa  now,  viz.,  the 
Berbers,  the  Arabs,  and  the  negroes  south  of  the  Sahara.  He  demar- 
cates the  Berbers  as  follows : 

"  Now  the  real  fact  which  dispenses  with  all  hypotheses,  is  this : 
the  Berbers  are  the  children  of  Canaan,  son  of  Ham,  son  of  Noah  ; 
as  we  have  already  enunciated  it,  when  speaking  of  the  gi*and 
divisions  of  the  human  species.  Their  grandfather  was  named 
Mazyh  [the  Masici  of  the  Latins,  and  the  Mazues  of  the  Greeks] ; 
their  brothers  were  the  Gergesians  (Aghrikeeh);  the  Philistines, 
children  of  Casluhim  [here  he  likewise  takes  the  Hebrew  plural  for 
the  Shillouhs  to  be  a  man !],  son'  of  Misraim,  son  of  Cham,  were 
their  relations.  *  *  *  One  must  admit  [he  adds  peremptorily]  no 
other  opinion  than  ours." 

"Wiser  than  some  modern  ethnographers,  our  A.rab  author  wholly 
rejects  Berber  "pretensions  to  Arabian  origin:  pretensions  that  I 
regard  as  ill-founded;  because  the  situation  of  the  places  which 
these  tribes  inhabit,  and  an  examination  of  the  language  spoken  by 
them,  establish  sufficiently  that  they  have  nothing  in  common 
with  the  Arabs.  I  except  only  the  Sanhadja  and  the  Ketama  (but 
God  knows  if  this  be  true !),  who,  as  the  Arab  genealogists  say 
themselves,  appertain  to  this  nation, —  an  opinion  that  accords  with 
my  own."  The  Berbers  apostatized  from  Islam  twelve  times :  nor 
was  this  religion  implanted  among  them  before  Tarec  (a  Berber 
chief,  who  crossed  over  to  Gibraltar,  gebel-Tarec,  "hill  of  Tarec,"  a.  d. 
711)  went  to  Spain.  "  These  chiefs  bore  with  them  a  great  number 
of  Berber  sheykhs  and  warriors,  in  order  to  combat  the  infidels. 
After  the  conquest  of  Spain,  these  auxiliaries  fixed  themselves  there ; 
and,  since  then,  the  Berbers  of  the  Moghreb  have  remained  faithful 
to  Islamism,  and  have  lost  their  old  habit  of  apostasy."  A  portion 
of  the  Berbers,  previously  to  that,  had  embraced  Judaism;  but 
"Idrees  the  First,  descendant  of  El-Hassan,  son  of  El-Hassan 
(grandson  of  Mohammed),  having  come  into  the  Moghreb,  caused 
to  disappear  from  this  country  the  very  last  vestige  of  these  religions 
[Christian,  Jewish,  and  pagan],  and  put  an  end  to  the  independence 
of  these  tribes. 

"We  believe  that  we  have  cited  a  series  of  facts  which  prove  that 
the  Berbers  have  always  been  a  people,  powerful,  redoubtable,  brave, 
and  numerous :  a  true  people,  like  so  many  others  in  this  world, 
such  as  the  Arabs,  the  Persians,  the  Greeks,  and  the  Bomans.    Such 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  541 

was,  in  fact,  the  Berber  race.  *  *  *  From  the  Moghreb-el-aksa 
[extremest  west]  as  far  as  Tripoli ;  or,  to  speak  more  exactly,  as  far 
as  Alexandria ;  and  from  the  Roman  sea  [Mediterranean]  as  far  as 
the  country  of  the  blacks,  the  whole  of  this  region  has  been  inha- 
bited by  the  Berber  race ;  and  this  from  an  epoch  of  which  neither 
the  anterior  events  nor  even  the  beginning  are  known," — wrote  Ebn 
Khaledoon,  five  centuries  before  the  science  of  Ethnology  even 
possessed  a  name. 

So  much  being  settled,  I  proceed  to  indicate  points  of  geogra- 
phical contact  between  the  Berber  and  the  true  negro  races ;  ob- 
serving only,  that  the  possession  of  dromedaries  and  camels  has  — 
since  the  1st  century  b.  c.  as  the  earliest,  and  since  the  Vllth  a.  d.  as  the 
best  historical  date  for  any  large  scale — spread  the  Berber  tribes  in  a 
semi-circle  over  all  the  northern  confines  of  the  Beldd-es-Sooddn, 
countries  of  the  blacks.406 

It  is  from  the  name  of  the  tribe  Aourtka  that  Carette,  very  reason- 
ably, derives  the  name  of  "Africa;"  and  it  is  also  at  the  oases 
Ouaregla,  Temacin,  and  Tuggurt, —  grouped  into  one  appellative, 
Ouad-Rir  (Moghrabee  for  Owldd-Righ)  —  that  mixture  of  Atlantic 
races  and  tongues  with  Arabian  chiefly  takes  place.  "High"  mean- 
ing "separation;"  "  Ouad-Righ"  signifies  "the  sons  of  the  Righ"  or 
of  separation. 

"  The  Arabs  come  from  the  tribes  [Bedawees] ;  the  Berbers  pass 
as  originating  fi'om  the  soil.  It  is,  on  the  other  hand,  easy  to  recog- 
nize them ;  because  the  Arabs  have  the  skin  tanned  like  men  of  the 
white  race  who  have  sojourned  long  in  southern  countries ;  whereas 
the  Ruar'a,  properly  so  called,  or  autochthonous  inhabitants,  have 
the  skin  nearly  as  black  as  the  negroes,  and  some  few  the  traits  of  the 
black  race.  Albeit,  they  differ  still  essentially  from  the  Nigritian 
peoples ;  and,  in  the  country  itself,  they  can  never  be  confounded. 
I  have  seen  many  Rouar'a  [new  French  spelling  for  Roudgha~] 
Berbers  very  much  resembling  the  negro,  and  yet  who  would  have 
considered  it  an  insult  to  be  confounded  with  the  race  of  slaves. 
[Amalgamation  with  negresses  explains  these  exceptional  cases.] 
They  characterize  their  color  by  no  other  epithet  than  Khamri, 
which  signifies  'brown'  [or  reddish,  always  the  Egyptian  color  for 
the  Hamitic  stock].407 

"The  autochthonous  population  of  the  'children  of  Righ'  (sepa- 
ration) mark,  therefore,  the  transition  of  the  color  and  the  features 

406  D'Escayrac  de  Lautcre  (Le  Desert  el  le  Soudd.n,  Paris,  1854)  has  written  one  of  the 
best  books  on  this  subject;  but,  having  lost  my  copy,  I  am  unable  to  quote  an  enterprising 
traveller  who  knows  those  regions  so  well. 

407  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  533  :  —  Otia  JSgy-pliacu,  p.  134. 


542  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

between  the  white  race  and  the  black  race.  It  is  not  the  tint,  more 
or  less  bronzed,  of  the  white  populations  of  the  south  of  Europe :  it 
is  a  color  altogether  different,  and  which  belongs  to  them, — much 
nearer  to  black  than  to  white.  Nevertheless,  they  have,  of  the  black 
race,  neither  the  fiat  nose  nor  the  thick  lips,  any  more  than  the 
woolly  hair;  although,  however,  these  traits  are  not  those  of  the 
white  race. 

"It  is  an  intermediary  race,  half-way  between  ;  attached,  at  one  and 
the  same  time,  to  the  two  extreme  races  to  which  it  approximates 
and  which  it  separates."  Such,  finally,  is  a  precis  of  Berber  ques- 
tions at  the  present  hour;  which  cuts  them  loose,  as  another  type  of 
man,  from  all  other  races  of  humanity, — excepting  as  concerns  their 
Hamitic  source  and  their  linguistic  affinities,  on  which  M.  Maury 
(supra,  p.  142-3)  has  sufficiently  cleared  up  obscurities.  In  common 
with  the  Hebrews,  the  Egyptians,  the  Chinese,  the  American  abo- 
rigines, and  some  others  whose  earliest  locum  tenens  has  not  yet  been 
quite  so  sharply  trenched  in  ethnology,  the  Berbers  represent  an 
especial  and  independent  group  of  proximate  races ;  being  the  real 
human  component  of  what  Agassiz408  has  so  conclusively  determined, 
in  zoological  distribution,  as  the  "North  African  fauna"  of  the 
"European  realm," — populations  to  whom  the  appellative  Atalan- 
tidse  [the  root  of  which  is  certainly  Berber — a  name  for  part  of  Mt. 
Atlas409]  would,  etyniologicalty,  geographically,  and  historically,  be 
appropriate  for  convenience  of  ethnic  classification. 

The  next  step  ought  to  take  us  to  the  basin  of  the  Senegal,  where 
this  river  constitutes  the  dividing  line  between  these  Atalantidse 
with  their  Arab  companions,  and  those  true  negro  races  whose 
habitat  has  never  voluntarily  lain  to  the  north  of  it.  Of  course, 
before  the  camel  reached  Barbary,  neither  the  Berbers  nor  the  Arabs 
could  have  traversed  the  Saharran  wastes  to  hunt  the  negroes ;  nor 
the  latter  have  come  across  it  northwards  for  the  mere  satisfaction 
of  becoming  enslaved  by  those  superior  types  of  man. 

To  do  so  properly,  one  should  begin  with  the  first  discovery  of 
this  river  by  Europeans,  about  the  XTVth  century,  and  trace  through 
the  works  of  Rochefort  (1643),  Gaby  (1689),  Labat  (1728),  Adan- 
son  (1757),  Golberry  (1787),  La  Barthe  (1785),  Durand  (1802), 
Mollien  (1818),  Matthews  (1787),  and  Laing  (1825),  the  progress 
of  knowledge  as  regards  its  now  varied  inhabitants.  Only  in  three 
of  the  above  travels  have  I  been  able  to  do  it ;  but  deficiencies  are 

408  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  lxxviii,  and  "Map." 

409  See,  on  the  probable  derivation  of  "  Antilia"  (Antilles)  from  Atlantis,  the  charming 
and  erndite  disquisition  of  D'Avezac,  Les  lies  Fanlasliques  de  £  Oce"an  Occidental  au  Moyen- 
Age,  Paris,  1845,  p.  27. 


THE    POLYGENISTS.  543 

tolerably  well  made  up  in  the  excellent  work  of  Raefenel.410  Under 
the  specific  designations, —  each  people  being  also  subdivided  into 
tribes,  of  Maures  (Arabs),  FoulaJis,  Sarracolets,  Bambaras,  Mandingos, 
and  Yoloffs — this  accurate  observer  manifests  their  distinctions  of 
type  and  character;  proving,  moreover,  that  the  white  man's  intel- 
ligence merges  into  ISTigritian  brutality  in  the  same  ratio  that,  step 
by  step,  one  travels-  south  from  the  Sahara  into  negro-land ;  and  that 
the  color  of  the  human  skin  is  darkened  by  race-character,  not  by 
imaginary  "climate;"  because,  the  Semitic  Arab,  who  has  been 
there  about  six  centuries,  is  no  blacker  than  his  ancestors  or  contem- 
poraries were,  or  are  now,  in  Arabia  itself.411  Luke  Burke's  argu- 
ment4'2 bears  out  my  assertion ;  and  I  have  since  beheld,  in  the 
G-alerie  Anthropologique  at  Paris,  the  beautifully  colored  portraits  of 
all  the  races  alluded  to. 

"  Let  lis  now  pass  on  to  Africa.  Here  we  find  the  negro  races 
occupying  some  of  the  most  torrid  regions,  but  not  exclusively. 
Arab  races  have  been  living  in  the  midst  of  them  for  thousands  of 
years,  and  yet  they  are  only  brown.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  are 
nearly  fair ;  for  their  blood  has  been  repeatedly  mixed  with  that  of 
northern  tribes  ;  and,  where  such  is  the  case,  we  find  that  the  climate 
does  no  more  than  simply  tan  or  freckle  such  parts  as  are  generally 
exposed  to  the  light.  Still  farther  to  the  south, — farther  even  than 
the  true  region  of  the  negroes — extend  the  tribes  of  the  Gralla,  who 
have  of  late  years  conquered  a  large  portion  of  Abyssinia.  These 
have  for  ages  occupied  the  plains  of  Central  Africa,  almost  under 
the  equator;  aud  yet  they  are,  at  the  utmost,  brown,  and  many  of 
them  comparatively  fair.  But,  more  than  this,  there  are  nomadic 
families  of  the  Tawrick  race,  who  have  wandered  from  an  unknown 
period  among  the  burning  sands  of  the  great  desert  itself,  and  still 
retain  their  fair  complexions.  They  are,  indeed,  no  more  affected 
by  this  torrid  region  than  most  Europeans  would  be  after  a  residence 
there  of  a  few  months. 

"We  have  already  spoken,  in  a  former  chapter,  of  the  Kabyles  of 
the  Auress  mountains  in  Algiers, —  one  tribe  of  whom  have  not 
merely  a  fair  and  ruddy  complexion,  but  also  hair  of  a  deep  yellow. 

410  Op.  cit.,  Atlas,  colored  likeness  of  "Maure  de  Se"n6gal;" — who  might  be  well  con- 
trasted with  another  good  portrait  from  the  Abyssinian  side  of  Africa,  "  Djellab  marchand 
d'esclaves  du  Cordofand,"  in  the  Revue  de  I'Orient,  Paris,  1854,  PI.  31. 

411  Exploration  du  Senegal,  depuis  St.  Louis  jusqu^A  la  Faleme,  au  deld  de  Bakel ;  de  la 
Faleme,  depuis  son  embouchure  jusqu'd.  Sansandig ;  des  mines  d'or  de  Kenieba,  dans  le  Bam- 
bouk ;  des  pays  de  Galam,  Bondou,  el  Woolli;  et  de  Gamble,  depuis  Baracounda  jusqu'il 
V  Ocean,  during  1843-4;  Paris,  1846,  8vo,  with  folio  atlas. 

412  Ethnological  Journal,  London,  No.  2,  July,  1848, — "Varieties  of  Complexion  in  the 
Human  Race,"  p.  76-7. 


544  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Dr.  Shaw,  the  traveller  from  whom  we  quoted,  gives  a  still  more 
decided  testimony  against  the  theory  of  climate,  in  speaking  of  the 
Moorish  women.  His  words  are :  '  The  greatest  part  of  the  Moorish 
women  would  he  reckoned  beauties  even  in  Great  Britain,  as  their 
children  certainly  have  the  fairest  complexion  of  any  nation  whatever. 
The  boys,  indeed,  by  wearing  only  the  tiara,  are  exposed  so  much  to 
the  sun  that  they  soon  acquire  the  swarthiness  of  the  Arab ;  but  the 
girls,  keeping  more  at  home,  preserve  their  beauty  till  they  are 
thirty,  at  which  time  they  are  usually  past  child-bearing.' — (Travels 
in  Barbary  and  the  Levant,  fol.  1738,  p.  120.)  Here  we  perceive  the 
true  effects  of  climate  on  the  fair  races :  a  temporary  darkening  of 
the  parts  exposed  to  the  sun,  the  children  of  people  so  darkened 
born  perfectly  fair!  Who  can  tell  the  number  of  ages  that  the 
Moors  have  inhabited  the  north  of  Africa  ?  "Who  can  say  that  their 
present  region  is  not  their  original  country  ?  And  yet  here  they  are 
still,  a  perfectly  fair  race. 

"  Southern  Africa  also  presents  us  with  many  striking  illustrations 
of  the  fallacy  of  the  theory  of  climate.  We  shall  content  ourselves 
with  citing  two  of  the  most  remarkable,  viz.,  those  presented  by  the 
physical  peculiarities  of  the  Hottentots  and  Bosjesmans.  These  two 
races  have  been  considered  as  one ;  but  only  by  those  who  believe 
in  the  great  modifying  power  of  circumstances.  They  are  evidently 
distinct.  The  Bosjesmans  are  pigmies;  the  Hottentots,  where  pure, 
tall  and  large.  Persons  of  intermediate  stature  are,  of  course,  met 
with;  because  two  races  so  much  alike  in  most  respects,  residing 
near  each  other,  must  necessarily  have  intermarried  in  the  course  of 
ages ;  but  there  is  no  conceivable  reason  why,  except  as  distinct 
races,  the  one  should  be  active,  restless,  comparatively  brave,  and 
of  a  stature  seldom  exceeding  four  feet  nine  inches,  while  the  other 
is  tall,  large,  timid,  and  exceedingly  sluggish.  In  most  other  respects 
their  organization  is  similar ;  and  they  differ  from  all  other  portions 
of  mankind  in  the  nature  of  the  hair  and  in  two  remarkable  pecu- 
liarities in  the  female  structure.  They  are  in  the  midst  of  races 
widely  differing  from  them, — negroes  on  the  one  hand  and  Caffres 
on  the  other ;  both  black,  while  the  Hottentots  and  Bosjesmans  are 
simply  of  a  light  yellowish  brown.  How  can  these  facts  be  accounted 
for  except  as  differences  of  race  ?" 

A  view  of  some  curious  analogies,  a  propos  of  the  Gaboon  river- 
land,  may  here  be  given. 

The  chart  (further  on),  illustrative  of  the  distribution  of  the  simiadse 
in  their  relation  to  that  of  some  inferior  types  of  man,  with  the  text 
accompanying,  suggests  a  few  hints  to  ethnographers.    Among  them 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  545 

is  the  fact,  that  the  highest  living  species  of  Monkeys  occupy  pre- 
cisely those  zoological  provinces  where  nourish  the  lowest  races  of 
mankind. 

It  is  well  known,  that  all  negroes  found  in  Algeria  (where  their 
lives  are  also  curtailed,  as  in  Egypt,  by  an  uncongenial  climate),  are 
brought  over  the  Sahara,  by  the  inland  caravan-trade,  chiefly  from 
the  neighborhood  of  the  Niger  and  Senegal  rivers.  This  shall  be 
made  evident  in  elucidating  the  Saharran  fauna  of  the  African  realm 
on  our  Tableau.  From  the  Senegal,  G-ambian,  Joliba,  and  other 
streams,  as  well  as  from  around  Lake  Tchad  and  its  affluents,  there 
is,  and  has  been,  ever  since  the  Arabian  camel  was  introduced;  about 
the  1st  century  b.  c.,4]3'a  ceaseless  flow  of  nigritian  captives  to  the 

413  Desmoulins,  op.  cit.,  Memoire  sur  la  Patrie  du  Chameau  a  line  Basse,  et  sur  Vepoque  de 
son  introduction  en  Afrique;  pp.  359-88:  —  I  am  acquainted  with  the  objections  raised  by 
Quatremere  (Memoires  de  VAcad.  Roy.  des  Inscriptions  et  Belles  Lettres,  XV.,  Paris,  1845;  pp. 
393-5.  — ) ;  but  Egyptological  reasons,  by  him  disregarded,  lead  me  to  deem  them  incon- 
clusive. 

A  word  here  about  "Camels."  Mention  was  made  (Types  of  Mankind,  p.  729,  note  610), 
of  a  MS.  memoir  of  my  own,  entitled  "Remarks  on  the  introduction  of  Camels  and  Drome- 
daries, for  Army-Transportation,  Carriage  of  Mails,  and  Military  Field-service,  into  the 
States  and  Territories  lying  south  and  west  of  the  Mississippi,  between  the  Atlantic  and 
Pacific  coasts — presented  to  the  War-Department,  Washington,  Oct.  1851 :" — and  dedicated 
to  the  Hon.  Jeff.  Davis,  then  U.  S.  Senator, — who  had  previously,  at  my  instigation  (Nat. 
Intelligencer,  Wash.,  D.  C,  27  March,  1851),  introduced  a  camel-bill  into  Congress. 

It  is  known  to  everybody  in  this  country  that  the  United  States  Transport  "  Supply"  has 
already  made  two  trips,  one  to  Alexandria,  and  the  other  to  Smyrna,  and  brought  over  to 
Texas  some  80  of  these  animals,  in  good  condition.  The  undertaking  could  not  fail  to  be 
successful, — 1st,  because  the  ship  was  commanded  by  my  old  friend  (welcomed  "  chez  moi" 
at  Cairo  as  far  back  as  1835),  Lieut.  David  Porter,  U.  S.  N. ;  —  and  2d,  because  the  War 
Department  has  merely  carried  out  (with  but  one  solitary  exception)  every  detail — down  to  the 
most  minute — of  my  "Remarks"  aforesaid,  in  regard  to  the  importation  of  these  animals. 

Following  the  maxim — "  je  reprends  ma  propri^te'  oil  je  la  trouve" — I  claim  here  the  credit 
of  chalking  out  the  lines  upon  which  these  Camels  reached  America ;  confident  that  if  (and 
I  hardly  think  such  contingency  possible  after  the  instruction  the  party  in  charge  had  from 
myself),  there  should  be  any  failure  in  developing  the  unbounded  utility  of  these  quadrupeds 
after  their  landing,  such  eventuality  can  proceed  solely  through  United  States'  official  mis- 
management. 

Meanwhile,  I  presume  my  above-mentioned  MS.  has  become  mislaid  at  the  War  Depart- 
ment; because  I  see  that  Mr.  Marsh,  in  his  very  nice  little  work  (Boston,  1856),  on  the 
"  Camel,"  whilst  gratefully  acknowledging  the  various  documents  on  the  subject  lent  him 
by  the  War  Department,  with  honorable  mention  of  the  Authors  of  each  paper,  has  nowhere 
alluded,  either  to  myself  (who  planned  the  whole  affair  for  them  in  writing,  1851-6),  or  to 
my  said  "Remarks." 

Now,  whether  my  MS.  (bound  in  red  morocco,  too)  be  or  be  not  in  existence  at  the  War 
Department,  it  so  happens  that,  knowing  perfectly  well  the  sort  of  principles  current  at 
Washington — -District  Columbia, —  I  had  taken  3  precautions  to  ensure  preservation  of  my 
ideas  therein ;  1st,  by  having  a  fac-simile  copy  made  by  the  hands  of  a  third  party  before 
transmitting  the  original  from  Pittsburg,  Pa.,  to  the  Department;  2d,  by  securing  suflicient 
collateral  evidence  of  my  connection  with  that  Institution  from  first  to  last ;  and  3d,  by 
preserving,  in  a  patent  Salamander  safe,  my  MS.  copy,  with  every  scrap  of  correspondence 

35 


546  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

slave-marts  of  Timboctoo,  Mourzook,  and  other  oases ;  whence  they 
become  distributed,  by  Touarik  and  Arab  gellabs,  throughout  Maroc- 
chine,  Algerian,  Tunisian  and  Tripolitan,  territories.  Now,  the 
various  negro  populations  of  the  above-named  rivers  are  by  no  means 
the  most  austral  nations  represented  in  these  cities'  local  slave-markets ; 
because  such  distinct  stations  are,  in  their  turn,  re-filled  by  caravans 
from  the  interior;  whose  " exploitation"  of  nigritian  prisoners  stretches 
backwards  to  Ashantee,  Benin,  Dahomey,  Adamoua,  &c. :  whither 
again  converge  endless  radiations  of  still  more  inland  slaves,  whose 
hunted-grounds  reach  southwards  to  an  unknown  extent,  but  cer- 
tainly as  far  as  Congo.  The  consequence  is,  that  in  Algeria,  as  at 
Cairo,  numberless  varieties  of  negroes,  from  many  countries,  are 
represented,  in  human  slave-basaars. 

Among  these,  a  peculiar  type  is  frequently  seen  even  now,  but  was 
far  more  abundant  prior  to  the  abolition  of  that  piratical  Deyship,  by 
the  French  in  1830.  Of  this  race  I  clearly  remember  two  huge  and 
ferocious  specimens  working  about  Mohammed  Ali's  arsenal  at 
Alexandria  for  a  long  time,  between  1827  and  1835;  when  I  think 
they  must  have  succumbed  to  the  great  plague  of  the  latter  year.  They 
had  been  landed  from  the  crews  of  an  Algerine  frigate  and  a  corvette 
that,  sent  as  quota  to  the  Pasha's  squadrons  against  the  Greeks, 
rotted  their  hulks  out  in  our  western  harbor,  after  the  fall  of  theii 
quondam  owner  at  Algiers.  Witness  for  years,  and  once  assistant 
retributor,  of  the  brutality  of  these  two  Algerine  negroes,  their  phy- 
siognomies are  ineffaceable  from  my  memory ;  being  besides  totallj 
distinct  from  any  negro  race  brought  down  the  Mle  to  Cairo. 

It  was,  therefore,  with  satisfaction  that  I  lately  recognized  the  fea- 
tures of  my  old  acquaintances,  in  two  plates,  wholly  distinct  in  ori- 
gin, representing  the  same  type  abiding  in  French  Algeria :  with  the 
only  difference  that  the  men  I  knew  were  almost  black  in  color. 

The  profile  of  one  is  fac-simile-ed  in  No.  26  of  our  Tableau  under 
the  name  of  "  Saharran-negro  ;"  partly  because  this  individual,  or  his 
parents,  must  have  been  brought  across  the  great  desert,  and  partly 

between  myself  and  others, — from  Dec.  1850,  at  Philadelphia,  down  to  June  1856,  at  Paris — 
relative  to  this  grand  experiment  of  naturalizing  the  Arabian  camel,  amidst  its  homogeneous 
climatic  and  other  conditions,  in  the  south-western  States  and  Territories  of  the  United 
States  on  this  continent. 

I  hope  soon  to  have  a  little  more  leisure  than  just  at  this  moment ;  when  it  will  afford  me 
great  pleasure,  the  public  much  entertainment,  and  the  Honorable  Mr.  Marsh  peculiar 
gratification,  to  show  how  easy  it  was  to  "  see  through  a  millstone,  after  somebody  had  made 
a  hole  in  it,"  as  concerns  the  successful  importation  of  these  Camels — no  less  than  this 
gentleman's  astounding  mesmeric  clairvoyance  in  guessing  at  every  fact  and  idea,  contained 
in  that  fac-simile  copy  of  my  "Remarks"  aforesaid,  during  the  period  that  it  lay  locked 
up  in  a  patent  Salamander  safe.  Philadelphia,  10th  February,  1857. — G.  R.  G.,  "(for- 
merly) United  States  Consul  at  Cairo." 


THE     FOLTGENISTS.  547 

because  numerous  historical  analogies  lead  me  to  infer,  that  it  is 
towards  Senegal  that  his  typical  family  should  be  sought  for.  Its 
original  colored  drawing,  much  larger  in  size,  being  one  of  about 
forty  beautifully-executed  portraits  taken  on  the  spot  by  the  Commis- 
sion scientifique  d'  Alger  ie,  is  now  suspended  in  the  Gf-alerie  Anlhropo- 
logique  of  the  Parisian  Museum.  Published  by  the  Chief  of  that  ex- 
pedition, the  late  Bory  de  Saint- Vincent,414  my  copy  has  been  traced 
upon  stone  directly  from  Bory  de  St.  Vincent's  plate,  in  my  posses- 
sion.    He  thus  briefly  describes  this  head's  history : — 

"ISTo.  III.,  finally,  is  the  Ethiopian  type.  This  head  was  that  of 
a  bandit  native  of  the  Soodiin  [negro-land],  killed  in  the  Sahel  [At- 
lantic slopes  towards  the  Sahara],  where  one  of  the  sabre-cuts  with 
which  he  was  smitten  shows,  over  the  left  parietal,  how  much  more 
considerable  the  thickness  of  the  bones  of  the  cranium  is  in  negroes 
than  in  other  men.  *  *  * 

"In  disposing,"  proceeds  our  author,  "the  bony  cases  [skulls]  that 
I  present  to  the  Academy,  upon  the  same  plane  one  after  another, 
we  are  first  struck  by  the  manner  in  which,  on  starting  from  the  At- 
lantic type  [or  Berber,  see  a  semplar  gradation  in  our  Tableau,  ~Ho. 
22],  wherein  the  facial  angle  is  almost  a  right  one,  the  gradual  pro- 
minence of  the  upper  jaw  becomes  considerable.  This  elongation  is 
such  in  the  Ethiopian,  that  the  resemblance  of  his  skeleton  to  that 
of  the  large  monkeys  becomes  striking  [ubi  supra'] :  at  the  base  of  a 
sufficiently-high,  but  laterally  compressed  frontal  region,  the  supra- 
orbital ridges  project  almost  as  considerably  as  those  of  a  middle- 
aged  Orang.  Other  bony  prominences,  not  less  marked,  crown  the 
temporal  region  at  the  attachments  of  the  temporal  muscles ;  a  very 
pronounced  depression  exists  at  the  root  of  the  nose,  of  which  the 
bones  proper  are  also  the  shortest,  and  so  disposed  forwards  that 
their  situation  becomes  nearly  horizontal.  Certain  airs  of  animality 
result  from  this  osteological  ensemble ;  and,  the  facial  traits  not  being 
less  strange,  the  breadth  of  the  nose  with  its  widely-open  wings,  and 
the  prodigious  thickness  of  the  lips,  whose  lower  one  seems  to  be 
quasi-pendent,  impress  upon  this  Ethiopian's  profile  the  aspect  of  a 
sort  of  muzzle." 

Following  this  famed  anthropologist's  suggestion,  I  now  submit, 
to  the  reader's  inspection,  four  wood-cuts  (A,  B,  C,  D,  on  next  page). 

Few  remarks  suffice  to  establish  authenticity."    The  palpable  ana- 

414  Sur  V Anthropologic  de  VAfrique  Francaise  (read  at  the  Academic  des  Sciences,  30 
June,  1845) — extract  from  the  Mac/asm  de  Zoologie,  d'Analomie  compare'e  et  de  PaUontologie ; 
Paris,  Oct.  1845;  pp.  13-4;  and  Plate  Mammiferes,  PI.  61,  figs.  "No.  III.  Type  Ethio- 
picn."  Bory  de  St.  Vincent  is  the  well-known  polygenist;  author  of  V Homme  (Homo). 
Essai  zoologique  sur  le  Genre  Ilumain  ;  of  which  I  am  only  acquainted  with  the  2d  odition; 
Paris,  2  toIs.  18mo.,  1827. 


548 


TEE     MONOGENISTS     AND 


logies  and  dissimilitudes,  between  an  inferior  type  of  mankind  and  a 
superior  type  of  monkey,  require  no  comment. 

A.  B. 


Three-quarter  view  of  another  Algerine  negr< 
"  Biskree."  415 


Front  view  of  our  Saharran-negro.  Com- 
pare his  tinted  profile  in  No.  26  of  our 
"  Ethnographic  Tableau," — from  B.  de 
St.  V.'s  plate. 

D. 


Gorilla- Gina,  Is.  Geoff.  Troglodytes- Tshego, — 
Duv.     (Three-quarter  yiew.)416 


Same  animal. 
(Front  view. ) 


415  Galerie  Eoyale  de  Costumes,  folio,  colored,  Paris  (Aubert  &  Cie.,  Place  de  la  Bourse, 
No.  29) ;  "Porteur  a  Alger,"  PI.  15. 

416  Annales  des  Sciences  Naturclles,  3m«  Eerie,  Zoologie,  Paris,  1851 ;  xvi.  PI.  VII.,  figs.  1, 
3;  and  pp.  154-92.  —  Cf.  also.  Duveknot,  Comples  rendus  de  I'Acad.  des  Sciences,  1853; 
xsxvi.  pp.  924-36. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  549 

Fig.  B — as  above  stated,  is  the  front  view  of  the  "  Saharran  Negro  " 
of  whom  our  Tableau,  No.  26,  gives  the  profile.  The  color  of  the 
original  is  a  livid  tawny  black,  chiefly  due  to  drainage  of  blood  after 
decapitation ;  for  it  was  drawn  on  the  field  of  the  skirmish.  By  com- 
parison with  the  profile,  its  Simian  expression  will  be  the  better  per- 
ceived. 

Fig.  A — has.no  history,  beyond  the  reference  that  his  name  was 
"Biskry,"  and  that  he  happened  to  be  a  "Porter  at  Algiers :"  but 
nomenclature  identifies  the  route  by  which  he,  or  his  progenitors, 
reached  A  lgeria,  in  the  Oasis  of  Biskra.™  I  infer  that  this  was  his 
nick-name  (soubriquet) ;  because,  in  Arabic  as  in  Hebrew,418  the 
suffix  ye,  ee  (iod),  to  a  geographical  appellative  indicates  the  "  being 
of,"  or,  "belonging  to"  a  locality;  so  that  our  Biskree,  from  Biskra, 
means  in  English  the  Biskr-ian. 

Hence  we  learn  the  road  of  his  transit  over  the  Sahara.  In  the 
original  plate  the  color  of  his  skin  is  a  blackish-red  brown ;  and  we 
know  that  almost  every  shade,  from  a  dirty  yellow  to  a  full  ebony,  is 
to  be  met  with  among  aborigines  of  Africa — on  which  hereinafter. 
I  have  purposely  chosen  this  sample,  which  is  wholly  independent 
of  Bory  de  St.  Vincent's,  to  substantiate  the  existence  of  such  par- 
ticular types  in  North-western  Africa.  Thirty-three  years  have 
passed  since,  as  a  boy,  I  saw  the  bronze  "  Mori "  (Moors)  in  the  Ar- 
senal of  Leghorn.  I  stand  corrected  if  this  man  is  not  one  of  the 
same  types. 

Figs.  C  and  D — are  front  and  profile  heads  of  the  specimen,  as  yet 
unique,  of  a  perfect  adult  Gorilla  ;  which,  preserved  in  spirits,  was 
sent  to  the  Parisian  Museum  d'ffistoire  Naturelle,  in  1852,  from  the 
Gaboon  River,  by  Dr.  Franquet. 

If  hypercriticism419  should  object  to  renewed  selection  of  extreme**1 

m  Prisse  d'Avennes's  Revue  Orimtale  el  Algerienne,  Paris,  8vo.,  1852;  i. — Pkax,  "Com- 
munications entre  l'Algerie  et  le  Senegal, "  pp.  275-95,  and  Map: — also  Campmas,  "Oasis 
de  Biskra ;"  pp.  296-303. 

418  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  531-2. 

419  The  London  Athenaeum  (June  17,  1854),  in  reviewing  our  last  work,  did  cot  like  the 
contrasts  afforded  by  placing  the  Apollo  Belvidere,  an  African  negro,  and  a  Chimpanzee, 
on  the  same  plate.  It  was  shown  in  the  next  number  (Athenceum,  June  24),  that  they  were 
copied  from  the  accurate  designs  of  an  English  artist — "William  Harvey,  the  pupil  of  Be- 
wick." 

420  Luke  Bukke  (Ethnological  Journal,  London,  New  Series,  No.  1,  Jan.  1854;  p.  88) 
happily  says — "The  best  means  of  treating  man  properly  is  to  treat  him  as  we  do  the  most 
clearly-defined  portions  of  general  zoology.  Should  we  not,  for  instance,  better  promote 
our  knowledge  of  the  dog,  by  carefully  noting  the  most  aberrant  of  his  forms,  than  by  any 
selection  of  average  skulls  ?  And  why  should  it  not  be  so  with  man  also  ?  We  would, 
therefore,  take  the  liberty  of  suggesting  to  all  engaged  in  pursuits  of  this  kind,  that  the 
best  mode  of  consulting  the  interests  of  science  is  to  think  less  of  averages  and  more  of 
individualities." 


550  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

samples  for  proper  illustration  of  a  zoological  subject;  and  perad- 
venture  exclaim  that  a  decollated  negro,  upon  whose  features  are 
stamped  the  last  agonies  of  violent  death,  is  not  a  fit  exponent  of  the 
type  I  call  "  Saharran-negro  "  until  its  natural  province  be  made 
known,  my  rejoinder  would  be  simply  this:  —  our  Biskreean,  from 
the  same  regions  and  in  "  species  "  identical,  seems  to  have  been  in 
full  blossom  when  his  portrait  was  taken  at  Algiers ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  claim  that  some  allowance  of  similar  kind  ought,  in 
fairness,  to  be  made  in  behalf  of 'a  poor  homicided  Cforilla,  whose 
facial  expression  alcohol  has  doubtless  distorted  and  contracted. 
Surgeons  and  physicians,  when  elaborating  facts  in  their  medical 
publications,  habitually  leave  aside  "sentiment"  as  merely  obstruc- 
tive to  knowledge.  It  is  time,  I  think,  that  ethnographers  should 
imitate  such  example. 

The  disquisition  accompanying  our  Monkey-chart  explains  some 
geographical  coincidences  between  species  of  the  simiadse  and  some 
races  of  mankind ;  but,  by  way  of  anticipation,  it  is  remarkable  that 
this  type  of  anthropomorphous  apes  actually  dwells  in  Africa  not  a 
thousand  miles  from  the  region  inhabited  by  the  above  type  of  negro. 

But  there  are  still  lower  forms  of  the  negro  type  precisely  in  those 
regions  around  the  Bight  of  Benin  where  the  two  highest  species  of 
African  anthropoidse,  viz.,  the  G-orilla  and  the  Chimpanzee,  overlap 
each  other  in  geographical  distribution.  The  best  of  authorities  on 
the  latter  subject,  Prof.  Jeffries  Wyman,  of  Harvard  University,421 
wrote  long  ago : 

"Whilst  it  is  thus  easy  to  demonstrate  the  wide  separation  be- 
tween the  anthropoid  and  the  human  races,  to  assign  a  true  position 
to  the  former  among  themselves  is  a  more  difficult  task.  Mr.  Owen, 
in  his  earlier  memoir,  regarded  the  T.  niger  as  making  the  nearest 
approach  to  man;  but  the  more  recently  discovered  T.  gorilla,  he  is 
now  induced  to  believe,  approaches  still  nearer ;  and  regards  it  as 
'the  most  anthropoid  of  the  known  brutes.'  This  inference  is  derived 
from  the  study  of  the  crania  alone,  without  any  reference  to  the  rest 
of  the  skeleton. 

"After  a  careful  examination  of  the  memoir  just  referred  to,  I  am 
forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  preponderance  of  evidence  is  un- 
equivocally opposed  to  the  opinion  there  recorded ;  and,  after  placing 
side  by  side  the  different  anatomical  peculiarities  of  the  two  species, 
there  seems  to  be  no  alternative  but  to  regard  the  chimpanzee  as 
holding  the  highest  place  in  the  brute  creation." 

421  Crania  of  the  Euge-ena  (Troglodytes  gorilla,  Savage)  from  Gaboon,  Africa,  read  before 
the  Boston  Society  of  Natural  History,  Oct.  3,  1849; — from  the  American  Journal  of  Science 
and  Arts,  2d  series,  vol.  ix  ;  p.  9. 


THE     P0LT6ENISTS.  551 

On  the  other  hand,  Prof.  Agassiz  remarked,  in  our  former  work'; 422 
"The  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  do  not  differ  more  one  from  the  other 
than  the  Mandingo  and  the  Guinea  negro :  they  together  do  not 
differ  more  from  the  orang  than  the  Malay  or  white  man  differs  from 
the  negro:" — and  again,  in  the  present  [" see Pref. Rem."] :  "A 
comparison  of  the  full  and  beautifully  illustrated  descriptions  which 
Owen  has  published,  of  the  skeleton  and  especially  of  the  skulls  of 
these  species  of  orangs,  with  the  descriptions  and  illustrations  of 
the  different  races  of  man,  to  be  found  in  almost  every  work  on  this 
subject,  shows  that  the  orangs  differ  from  one  another  in  the  same 
manner  as  the  races  of  men  do  ;  so  much  so  that,  if  these  orangs  are 
different  species,  the  different  races  of  men  which  inhabit  the  same 
countries,  the  Malays  and  the  Negrillos,  must  be  considered  also  as 
distinct  species." 

For  evidence  that,  in  the  same  west-African  localities,  there  exist 
inferior  grades  of  negroes,  lower  than  anywhere  else  known,  there 
is  an  unexceptionable  and  recent  authority,  in  a  good  ethnologist, 
the  missionaiy  Wilson,423  who  describes  these  "degenerate  branches" 
—  a  sort  of  negro-gypsies — with  great  unction  and  precision. 

But  we  possess  still  later  information,  and  from  a  daring  and 
reliable  naturalist,  M.  Duchaillu, — deservedly  lauded  in  Dr.  Meigs's 
chapter  [supra,  p.  324,  note  243].  I  was  present  at  that  meeting  of 
our  Academy,  and  fortunate  enough  to  hear  Mr.  Cassin  read  Du- 
chaillu's  long  and  very  matter-of-fact  report.  Au  interesting  discus- 
sion then  arose,  opened  by  some  critical  comments  of  Mr.  Parker 
Foulke,  among  the  members  present ;  whence  two  facts  were  elicited : 
1st,  that,  near  Cape  Lopez,  Duchaillu  had  shot  both  Gorilla  and 
Chimpanzee,  the  skins,  &c,  of  which  are  on  their  way  to  the  Aca- 
demy; and,  2d,  that  he  had  just  visited  (his  letter  bears  date  Oct., 
1856),  up  the  Muni  river,  north  of  the  Gaboon,  two  extraordinary 
negro-tribes,  viz.,  the  Pauein  (whom  Wilson  calls  the  "Pangwee" — ■ 
different  from  the  M'pongwee)  and  the  Oshebo,  whose  habitats  are 
divided  by  that  stream.  As  Mr.  Foulke  observed,  they  are  the  first 
historical  instance  of  cannibalism  elevated  into  marketing  traffic ; 
for  the  Pauein  do  not  eat  their  own  dead,  but  exchange  them,  across 
this  river,  for  the  carcases  of  the  Oshebo!  M.  Duchaillu  quietly 
observes  that  he  could  n't  eat  meat  in  that  country. 

422  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  lxxv. 

123  Anonymous,  "Ethnographic  View  of  Western  Africa,"  a  pamphlet  of  34  pages,  New 
York,  1856 ;  p.  23.  It  is  from  Dr.  Meigs's  chapter  (supra,  p.  326)  that  I  learn  the  name 
of  this  clever  writer;  who  inadvertently  quotes,  as  if  he  had  found,  in  the  excellent  works 
of  Mr.  W.  B.  Hodgson,  what  he  can  find  nowhere  else  than  in  my  Olia  JEgypliaca,  and  in 
onr  Types  of  Mankind. 


552  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Now,  whilst  these  lowest  tribes  of  negro  man-eaters  dwell  in  the 
same  zoological  province  as  the  black  Gorillas  and  Chimpanzees,  is  it, 
I  would  ask,  through  fortuitous  accident  that,  where  the  red  orangs 
of  the  East  Indian  Archipelago  roam  the  jungle,  there  sbould  exist 
a  cannibalism  almost  parallel,  although  not  mercantile, —  as  shown 
in  the  reddish  B'hattas,  &c,  who,  some  years  ago,  devoured  two 
English  missionaries,  amongst  other  instances  ? 

It  is  to  be  remarked,  however,  tbat,  as  voyagers  observe,  can- 
nibalism in  Polynesia,  and  also  in  New  Zealand,424  does  not  seem  so 
much  to  have  been  an  instinctive  craving  among  Maori  nations,  as 
to  have  gradually  grown  into  a  habit  of  luxurious  feeding  among 
nautical  wanderers  who,  in  their  vicissitudes  of  navigation,  from 
island  to  island,  were  often  compelled  to  eat  each  other.435 

It  is  time  to  arrest  the  course  of  these  remarks;  the  object  of 
which  chiefly  is,  to  eliminate  from  further  discussion  some  objections 
that  the  unavoidable  brevity  of  the  ensuing  sections  will  compel  me 
to  pass  by  unnoticed.  Confined  within  some  200  pages,  my  contri- 
bution to  the  present  volume  must  fall  very  far  short  of  the  materials 
collected  for  its  elaboration.  I  apprehend,  nevertheless,  that  readers 
of  the  preceding  commentary  are  now  prepared  for  the  assertion 
that  a  current  phrase,  "the  unity  of  tbe  human  species,"  if  it  possess 
any  real  meaning,  leaves  us  in  utter  darkness  as  to  the  scientific 
question  of  mankind's  lineal  derivation  from  a  single  pair ;  or  as  to 
its  counter  theory,  the  plurality  of  origin  from  many  pairs,  situate 
in  different  geographical  centres,  and  possibly  formed  at  different 
epochas  of  creation  or  of  evolution.  Chronology  we  have  found  to 
be  a  "broken  reed"  for  any  event  anterior,  say,  to  the  15th  century 
b.  c. :  so  that  there  exists  no  positive  limit,  determinable  by  ciphers, 
to  human  antiquity  upon  earth,  save  such  as  palaeontology — a  science 
commenced  by  Lister  in  England,  Blumenbach  in  Germany,  and 
founded  on  true  principles  by  Cuvier  in  France  —  may  in  the  future 
discover.     To  talk  of  years,  or  hundreds  of  them,  in  the  actual  state 

*"  "Ces  abominable  coquins!"—  as  the  gallant  Capitaine  Laplace  (Voyage  aulour  du 
Monde,  &c,  sur  la  corvette  la  "Favorite"  1830-2,  Paris,  8vo,  text,  1835,  IV,  pp.  8-51) 
indignantly  exclaims,  after  witnessing  the  morality  of  their  women  and  the  human  repasts 
of  the  men.  The  same  pages  give  an  excellent  idea,  too,  of  the  missionaries  in  that  remote 
island. 

425  "It  will  probably  be  found,  on  further  examination,  however,  that,  with  the  exception 
of  the  disgusting  practice  of  cannibalism,  the  black  color,  with  crisped  hair,  common  to  all, 
there  are  as  many  points  of  difference  between  the  [Negrillos]  different  islanders  of  the 
group,  as  between  any  two  races  in  the  Pacific,"  says  Ekskine  (Journal  of  a  Cruise,  &c,  in 
R.  M.  S.  "  Havannah,"  London,  8vo,  1853,  p.  16).  He  confirms  also  Laplace  on  mission- 
aries; as  does  Du  Petit  Thcars  ( Voy.  autour  du  Monde,  &c,  frigate  la  "Venus,"  1836-9, 
Paris,  8vo,  text,  1843;  I,  pp  317-36;  II,  p.  373;  TV,  pp.  70-88);  not  to  mention  Mojren- 
hout  (Isles  du  Grand  Ocean,  Paris,  8vo,  1837;  I,  pp.  216-357;   II,  pp.  283-322,  515). 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  553 

of  this  science,  is  simply  absurd, — a  mere  illustration  of  what  Greg426 
properly  stigmatizes  as  "the  humiliating  subterfuges  resorted  to, 
by  men  of  science,  to  show  that  their  discoveries  are  not  at  variance 
with  any  text  of  Scripture."  Other  conclusions  the  reader  will  draw 
for  himself. 

On  the  majority  of  these  problems  my  own  opinions  assumed 
definite  shape  between  1845  and  1850;  but,  inasmuch  as  it  is  custo- 
mary for  authors  to  utter,  at  some  time  or  other,  their  individual 
"profession  of  faith,"  I  may  here  be  permitted  to  recall,  as  mine, 
some  passages  of  the  third  lecture  on  "Egyptian  Archaeology,"  de- 
livered427 in  my  last  course  at  this  city,  more  than  six  years  ago. 
They  have  since  remained  inedited;  and  the  only  value  I  attach  to 
them  accrues  from  the  circumstance  that,  written  at  the  suggestion 
of  my  honored  friend  the  late  Samuel  George  Morton,  they  have 
become  to  me  a  memento  of  past  interchanges  of  thought  with  one 
of  the  noblest  of  men. 

"  Creative  Power  has  veiled,  equally,  from  human  ken  the  origin 
"  of  man  and  his  end.  If  any  argument  were  required  to  impress 
"upon  my  mind  the  beneficence  of  the  Creator  towards  his  crea- 
"  tures428 — -any  fact,  that  in  the  brain  of  a  human  being  of  cultivated 
"intelligence,  and  which,  whispered  to  each  of  us  in  the  'still,  small 
"  voice '  of  conscience,  proves  the  goodness  of  Deity,  not  merely  to 
"  mankind,  but  to  all  animate  substances  created  by  his  will,  —  it  is, 
"  that,  like  every  other  animal,  Man  knows  not  the  hour  of  his  birth 
"  or  of  his  death ;  can  discover,  by  no  process  of  retrospective  ratio- 
's cination,  the  moment  when  he  entered  this  life ;  nor  ascertain,  by 
"  anticipation,  the  precise  instant  when  he  is  to  depart  from  it. 

"  An  example  will  illustrate  my  meaning : 

"  Leaving  aside,  in  this  question,  those  traditionary  legends  of  our 
"respective  infancies,  which,  in  themselves,  may  be  true  —  although 
"received,  as  inevitably  they  must  be,  on  the  "ipse  dixit"  of  others, 
"to  us  these  accounts  of  the  cradle  and  nursery  are  not  certain,*®  — 
"  each  individual's  memory  can  carry  his  personal  history  back  to  the 

426  Creed  of  Christendom,  pp.  2,  45-51. 

i2'  Philadelphia,  Chinese  Museum,  6th  January,  1851: — "North  American  and  Gazette," 
Jan.  7. 

428  Beyond  all  works,  that  of  my  venerable  friend,  M.  Hercule  Straus-Durckheim 
{Theologie  de  la  Nature,  Paris,  3  vols.  8vo,  1852)  contains  the  ablest  demonstration  of  Crea- 
tive wisdom  and  benevolence  through  the  science  of  comparative  physiology,  in  which  the 
author  of  "  Anatomie  descriptive  and  comparative  du  Chat,"  is  known  by  naturalists  to  be 
an  unsurpassed  adept. 

429  Vico,  Scienza  Nuova  (translated  by  "  PAuteur  de  l'Essai  sur  la  formation  du  Dogme 
Catholique,"  Paris,  12mo,  1844;  pp.  41-4)  —  Axioms  IX-XVI;  on  the  distinction  between 
the  "  true,"  and  the  "certain." 


554  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

"period  when  logical  inductions,  from  facts  aquired  by  himself  in 
"  maturity,  can  determine  that  he  must  have  been  about  four  or  five 
"  years  old.  Some  persons'  memories  can  recede  farther,  and  recol- 
"  lect  events  coetaneous  with  their  second  year  of  infancy.  Beyond 
"  that,  all  is  blank  to  personal  reminiscence.  Wow,  it  is  from  this 
"  fact — a  commonplace  one,  if  you  please — that  Creative  benevolence 
"  resiles  as  a  sequence :  because,  human  science  might  possibly  attain 
"  to  such  perfection  (arguing  her  future  triumphs  from  her  present 
"  conquests  over  the  past),  that,  could  an  individual  determine  the 
"  precise  instant  when  his  body  had  been  quickened  by  the  spark  of 
"  life,  he  might,  as  a  chance-like  possibility,  be  able  to  deduce  from 
"it  also,  beforehand,  the  moment  of  his  decease.  Hope  of  life  in  this 
"  world,  beyond  such  given  point,  being  thereby  extinguished  in  his 
"breast,  every  stimulus  to  exertion,  moral  or  intellectual,  would 
"  vanish  with  it ;  and  such  man  would  rapidly  sink,  through  mere 
"  physical  indulgences,  to  the  level  of  the  brute.  That  misshapen 
"precursor  of  astronomical  science,  Astrology,  —  which,  originating 
"  at  least  2500  years  ago430  in  Chaldaic  Magianism,  sat,  for  centuries, 
"  like  a  nightmare  upon  the  torpid  intelligence  of  our  own  '  middle 
"ages'  —  really  dared,  with  Promethean  boldness,  to  cast  man's 
"  horoscope,  and  to  determine  the  instants  of  his  nativity  and  death, 
"  through  deceptive  manipulations  of  an  astrolabe :  but  this  hoary 
"imposture,  with  its  Egyptian  sister,  Alchemy,  and  their  cousin 
"  Vaticination,  deludes  now-a-days  no  educated  and  sane  mind.431 

"  Why  do  I  weary  your  intelligence  with  such  truisms  ?  Simply, 
"  in  order  to  posite  before  it  one  syllogistic  deduction,  as  an  incontro- 
"  vertible  point  of  departure  in  strictly-archreological  inquiries  into 
"  human  origines,  viz  :  that,  inasmuch  as  the  beneficent  Creator  has 
"  shrouded,  from  each  individual  man,  knowledge  of  his  personal 
"  beginning  and  his  end  ;  and,  as  all  Nations  are  but  aggregations  of 
"  individuals,  it  is,  ergo,  absolutely  impossible  to  fix,  chronologically 
"  speaking,  the  eras  at  which  primeval  Nations,  whose  existence  is 
"  antecedent  to  the  human  art  of  writing,  severally  were  born. 

"  Geology,  offspring  of  the  XTXth  century,  can  define  on  the 
"rocky  calendar  of  the  earth's  revolutions,  the  particular  stratum 
"  when  humanity  was  not :  but,  the  intervals  of  solar  time  existing 
"  between  such  stratification  and  our  erroneous  year432  Anno  Domini 

430  De  Rouge,  "Noms  6gyptiennes  des  Planetes,"  Bulletin  Archeologique  de  VAlhenceum 
Francais,  Mars,  1850  —  shows  how  the  system  was  developed  in  Demotic  times. 

431  "  The  science  of  the  Aruspices  was  so  eminently  absurd,  that  Cato,  the  Censor,  used 
to  say  he  wondered  how  one  Aruspes  could  look  at  another  without  laughing  out:"-^ 
McCulloh,  Impartial  Exposition  of  the  Evidences  and  Doctrines  of  the  Christian  Religion, 
Baltimore,  8vo,  1836 ;  p.  65. 

132  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  665-7 ;  and  supra,  p.  479. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  555 

1851,  cannot  be  expressed  by  arithmetic;  is  attainable  through  no 
known  rule  of  geometry ;  and,  to  the  time-measurer,  presents  no 
element  beyond  incalculable  and  incomprehensible  cycles  of  gloom 
— the  depths  of  which,  like  those  of  the  ocean,  his  plummet  can- 
not fathom. 

"  What  ultimate  goal  remains,  then,  for  our  aspirations  in  pursuit 
of  knowledge  about  'the  beginning  of  all  things,'  when  the  initial 
point — modern,  in  contrast  with  invertebrata,  or  more  inform  ves- 
tiges of  Nature's  incipient  handicraft,  discerned  in  the  '  old  red 
sandstone'  —  of  mankind's  first  appearance  on  this  planet  lies 
beyond  the  reach  of  our  contemporaries'  solution ;  and,  according 
to  my  view,  of  human  mental  capability,  past,  present,  or  to  come? 
What  can  the  Historian  hope  to  achieve  through  disinterment, 
from  the  sepulchre  of  by-gone  centuries,  of  such  fragments  of  hu- 
manity's infantine  life  as,  preserved  fortuitously  down  to  our  time, 
archaeology  now  collects  for  his  examination  ? 

"  In  the  minds  of  many  colleagues  in  Egyptology,  whose  philoso- 
phical results  it  becomes  my  province  to  lay  before  you ;  if  we  will 
consent  to  figure  to  imagination's  eye  the  aggregate  histories  of  the 
earth's  nations  as  if  these  were  embodied  pictorially  into  one  man 
— that  is,  were  we  to  personify  humanity  in  general  by  one  indivi- 
dual in  particular, — the  world's  history,  like  the  lifetime  of  a  per- 
son, will  classify  itself  naturally  into  something  like  the  following 
order :  presupposing  always  that  we  symbolize  our  idea  of  the  pend- 
ing XlXth  century,  by  the  figure  of  a  man  in  the  prime  of  life,  fast 
approaching  the  acme  of  physical,  mental,  and  moral,  perfection — 
say,  with  the  old  physicians,  that  we  take  him  at  his  'grand  cli- 
macteric ' 433  of  five  times  seven  years,  the  thirty-fifth  of  his  age. 

"  Inquiring  next  of  our  symbolic  man  his  individual  history,  we 
find  that,  without  effort,  his  memory  will  tabulate  backwards  the 
events  of  his  manhood,  twelvemonth  by  twelvemonth,  for  fourteen 
years,  to  his  traditionary  twenty-first  birthday ;  when  he  attained 
legal  rights  among  his  fellows.  He  will  equally  well  narrate  the 
incidents  of  the  preceding  seven  years,  during  which  he  had  served 
apprenticeship,  finished  a  collegiate  education,  or  otherwise  deve- 
loped, in  this  interval  of  adolescence,  the  faculties  allotted  to  his 
share  :  but  he  will  candidly  acknowledge  how  little  he  then  knew 
of  the  great  world  he  was  preparing  for,  and  how  completely  sub- 
sequent initiation  into  the  higher  mysteries  of  manly  life  had  altered 
the  preconceptions  of  his  noviciate.  Seven  years  still  farther  back, 
from  the  fourteenth  of  his  age,  his  recollections  will  carry  him ;  and 

433  Floubens,  Long evile  (vide  supra,  note  162): — Lucas,  Heredilc,  I,  pp.  254-84. 


556  THE    MONOGEKISTS    AND 

"  schoolboy-days  are  vividly  stamped  upon  the  leaflets  of  memory. 
"Youth,  however,  merges  insensibly  into  childhood;  but  beyond  his 
"  seventh  year  even  the  child's  remembrance  fades  away  into  infancy. 

"  Here  and  there  some  circumstance,  more  or  less  important  in  his 
"  awakening  history,  flashes  like  a  meteor,  or  flits  like  an  ignis  fatuus, 
"  across  his  mind.  Of  its  positive  occurrence  he  is  morally  sure  ;  of 
"  its  date  in  relation  to  his  own  age  at  the  time,  onwards  perhaps 
"  from  his  third  birthday,  he  knows  nothing ;  except  what  he  may 
"  attain  through  inductive  reasoning  guided  by  the  reports  of  others 
" — his  own  self-accredited  reminiscence  of  the  event  being  more  fre- 
"  quently  than  not,  but  the  reflex  of  what  may  have  been  told  him, 
"in  after  life,  by  witnesses  or  logopceists.434  His  cradle-hours  ante- 
"  date  his  own  memory :  their  incidents  he  has  gathered  from  domes- 
"  tic  traditions,  or  infers  them  by  later  observation  of  nursery-eco- 
" nomy  with  other  babies.  Ask  him  now — '  When  were  you  born?' 
"  Our  man  knows  not.  He  accepts  his  first  birthday  upon  faith,  '  the 
"evidence  of  things  unseen  ;'435  its  epoch  he  receives  upon  hearsay. 
"  The  accounts  he  has  heard  of  his  infantile  life,  from  nativity  to  his 
"  second  or  third  year,  may  be  true  enough ;  but,  to  himself,  they  are 
"  anything  rather  than  certainties. 

"  Now,  ■  the  life  of  nations  is  long,  and  their  traditions  are  liable 
"  to  alteration ;  but  that  which  memory  is  to  individual  man,  history 
"is  to  mankind  in  general.'436  Viewing  our  Cosmic  man,  then,  as 
"  the  symbol  of  the  history  of  all  humanity ;  and  sweeping  our  tele- 
"  scopes  over  the  world's  monumental  and  documentary  chronicles 
"extant  at  this  day;  at  what  age  of  humanity's  life  do  the  petro- 
"  gtypQS  0J?  the  oldest  historical  nation,  the  Egyptians,  first  present 
"themselves  to  the  archaeologist? — that  is,  was  the  earliest  known 
"civilization  of  the  Nile's  denizens,  as  now  attested  by  the  most 
"  ancient  stone-records  at  Memphis,  infantile,  puerile,  adolescent,  or 
"adult?  At  which  of  the  five  stages  of  seven  years,  mystically 
"  assumed  by  the  old  philosophers  to  be  preliminaries  of  their  '  great 
"climacteric,'  do  we  encounter  the  first  Egyptian,  at  the  Hid  Mem- 
"  phite  dynasty,  taken  with  Lepsius  about  the  35th  century  B.  c, 
"  or  some  5300  years  backward  from  our  present  hour  ? 

"  You  will  find,  after  examination  of  the  plates437  before  you,  which 

434  Maury,  LegendSs  Pieuses  du  Moyen-Age,  Paris,  8vo.,  1843;  pp.  239,  252-3,  261-77. 

435  "A  conviction  of  things  unseen;"  Paul,  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  si.  1 :— Shaepe's  New 
Testament,  p.  406. 

436  De  Brotonne,  Filiations  et  Migrations  des  Peuples. 

431  Lepsius,  Denhmaler  a.us  JEgypten,  Abth.  I,  B.  1-40 ;  or  thereabouts,  which,  with  other 
tableaux,  were  suspended  in  front  of  the  audience.  Cf.,  also,  some  deductions  from  their 
study,  developed  in  the  same  lecture,  in  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  412-4:  and  add  now  endless 
confirmations  resulting  through  Mariette's  later  discoveries  (supra,  p.  489-94). 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  557 

"  are  authentic  copies  of  the  oldest  sculptures  of  man  now  known 
"upon  earth,  that  neither  infancy  nor  childhood  is  represented  by 
"  these  most  ancient  of  records,  hardly  even  adolescence ;  but  that  the 
"  first  Egyptian  beheld  on  these  archaic  hieroglyphs,  leaps  at  a  bound 
"  from  out  of  the  night  of  unnumbered  generations  antecedent  to  his 
"day,  a  full-grown,  if  a  young,  man —  endowed  with  a  civilization 
"  already  so  advanced  5300  years  ago,  that  it  requires  an  eye  most 
"  experienced  in  Nilotic  art  to  detect  differences  of  style  between 
"  these  primordial  sculptures  of  the  Hid,  IVth,  and  Vth  dynasties, 
"  and  those  of  the  more  florid  Diospolitan,  or  Augustan,  period  of 
"  the  XVIIth  and  XVTHth  dynasties,  carved  twenty  centuries  later, 
"  and  during  Mosaic  times  in  Egypt !" 

Such  a  practised  eye  is  the  gift  of  our  erudite  collaborator  M. 
Pulszky  ;  and  to  his  paper  (ante,  Chapter  IE),  I  beg  leave  to  refer  the 
reader  for  accurate  details ;  closing,  for  myself,  further  definitions  of 
chronology  with  the  philosophical  comment  of  A.  "W.  von  Schlegel : m 

"  Time  has  conveyed  to  us  many  kinds  of  chronology :  it  is  the 
business  of  historical  criticism  to  distinguish  between  them  and  to 
estimate  their  value.  The  astronomical  chronology  changes  purely 
theoretic  cycles  into  historical  periods ;  the  mythical  makes  its  way 
supported  by  obscure  genealogical  tables ;  the  hypothetic  is  an  inven- 
tion of  either  ancient  or  modern  chronographers ;  and,  lastly,  the 
documentary  rests  upon  the  parallel  uninterrupted  demarcation  of 
events,  according  to  a  settled  reckoning  of  years.  The  last  alone 
deserves  to  be  called  'chronology'  in  the  strictest  sense;  it  begins,  however, 
much  later  than  is  commonly  supposed.  Had  this  been  duly  consi- 
dered, we  might  have  dispensed  with  many  an  air-built  system." 

Egypt,  oldest  of  historical  lands,  representing,  therefore,  but  the 
"  middle  ages"  of  mankind's  development  upon  earth,  typified  by  our 
cosmic  man,  arrived  at  one-third  of  the  "three-score  and  ten  years," 
imagined  by  Hebrew  writers  to  be  the  average  of  post-Mosaic439 
human  longevity,  it  follows  that,  at  the  Hid  dynasty,  say  5300  years 
ago,  the  Egyptians  at  least,  among,  very  likely,  other  oriental  nations 
whose  annals  are  lost,  had  long  before  passed  through  their  periods 
of  adolescence,  childhood,  and  infancy.  If  we  reflect  that,  since  the 
fall  of  Grecian  culture  —  itself  built  upon  thousands  of  years  of  ex- 
perience acquired  by  preceding  Eastern  nationalities  already,  during 
the  palmy  day  of  Hellas,  in  their  superannuation  or  decrepitude  — 
it  has  required  some  2000  years  of  knowledge  accumulated  upon 
knowledge,  of  inventions  heaped  upon  discoveries,  for  our  civiliza- 

438  Darstellung  der  JEyyptischen  Mylhologie  *  *  *  -and  Chronologie  (Prichard's)  Vorrede, 
Bonn,  1837 ;  pp.  xliv-1. 

439  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  706-12. 


558  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

tion  to  reach  the  noon  of  this  XlXth  century ;  what  longer  extent 
of  time  must,  I  ask,  "be  allowed  for  the  Egyptians  to  have  attained  to 
that  social  development  attested  by  the  kingly  pyramids,  princely  and 
aristocratic  tombs  of  the  IVth  Memphite  dynasty,440  when, —  unlike 
ourselves,  who  have  improved  the  patrimony,  by  them,  their  contem- 
poraries, and  successors,  bequeathed  to  us — they  seem  to  have  begun 
life  without  precedents :  and,  consequently,  having  had  to  grope 
through  their  anterior  stages  of  adolescence,  childhood,  and  infancy, 
before  reaching  the  manhood  of  their  first  monumental  recognition 
by  us,  must  have  found  each  civilizing  acquirement  the  more  arduous, 
exactly  in  the  ratio  as,  retroceding  in  antiquity,  their  national  life 
approximated  to  its  nursery. 

Yet  the  Egyptians  dwelt  upon  purely  alluvial  land,  bounded  on 
either  side  by  rocky  deserts ;  and  the  river  itself  betokens,  at  every 
period  of  its  flow  into  the  Mediterranean,  the  ever-tranquil  operation 
of  the  same  laws  that  constitute  its  organism  at  the  present  day. 

"  Linked,  through  its  perennial  rise  at  the  summer  solstice,  with 
the  astronomical  revolutions  of  the  divine  Orb  of  day  at  the  acme  of 
his  ardent  power,  and  most  glorious  effulgence,  —  marked,  in  the 
sky's  cerulean  blue,  during  the  period  of  its  increase,  by  the  heliacal 
ascent  of  Sirius, — each  monthly  phenomenon  of  the  deified  river  was 
consecrated  by  sempiternal  correspondencies  in  the  heavens ;  at  the 
same  time  that,  to  the  mind  of  the  devout  Egyptian,  Hapimoou,  the 
numerous  waters,  "Father  of  the  Gods  in  Senem,"441  appeared  to  be 
the  most  ancient  of  divinities,  in  his  capapity  of  progenitor  of  the 
celestial  Amun,  himself  "  a  great  God,  king  of  the  Gods ;"  who, 
through  a  mythical  association  with  Nouf,  was  the  "  Father  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Gods,  period  of  periods  of  years."  In  fact,  as  the 
benign  inundations  of  the  river  necessarily  preceded,  in  point  of 
date,  the  formation  of  the  alluvium,  the  Nile  seemed,  to  the  first 
human  wanderers  on  its  sedgy  banks,  to  be  the  physical  parent  of  all 
things  good  and  beneficent. 

"Exalted,  in  the  sacred  papyrus  Booh  of  the  Bead,  to  the  heavenly 
abodes  of  Elysian  beatitude,  the  Celestial  Nile  was  supposed  to  re- 
generate, by  lustration,  the  souls  of  the  departed  Egyptians,  and  to 
fertilize,  by  irrigation,  the  gardens  of  happiness  tilled  by  their  im- 
mortal spirits,  in  Amenthi ;  during  the  same  time  that,  on  earth,  the 
Terrestrial  Nile,  by  its  depositions  of  alluvion  created,  while  its 
waters  inundated,  a  country  so  famed  among  Eastern  Nations  for  its 
boundless  fecundity,   as  to  be  compared  (in  Gen.  xiii,  10,)  to  the 

440  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  Lepsius's  Denkmaler,  the  only  compendium  of  documents 
coetaneous  with  these  primitive  times,  is  known,  at  least,  to  the  doubting  critic. 
*"  Birch,  Gallery  of  Antiquities,  part  II,  pp.  25,  10,  2 ;  and  PI.  XIII. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  559 

"  Garden  of  leKOuall,  like  the  land  of  Mitzeaim:" — 44  that  is,  the 
two  Muss'r-s,  the  two  Egypts,  upper  and  lower ;  or  else,  Mitzrites,  the 
Egyptians ;  over  which  the  androgynous  Hapimoou  crowned  with 
the  Lotus  and  Papyrus  tiaras,  in  his  duplex  character  of  the  Southern 
and  the  Northern  Niles,  annually  spread  out  the  prolific  mould  and 
the  nourishing  liquid,  through  which  he  was  at  once  the  Creator  and 
the  Nurse  of  Egypt. 

"Thus,  renowned  from  immemorial  ages  as  the  gift  of  the  Nile, 
Egypt  issues  from  the  womb  of  primordial  time  armed  cap-a-pie,  like 
Minerva,  with  a  civilization  already  perfected  at  the  very  earliest 
epoch  of  her  history,  hieroglyphed  on  the  monuments  of  the  Illd  and 
IVth  dynasties,  prior  to  the  35th  century  before  the  Christian  era. 
But,  the  River  itself, — origin,  vital  principle,  and  motive  cause  of 
that  wondrous  civilization,  has  flowed  on  unceasingly  at  the  foot  of 
the  Pyramids ;  its  Sources  a  marvel,  an  enigma,  an  unfathomable 
mystery,  to  above  one-hundred-and-sixty  consecutive  human  genera- 
tions, which  have  'lived,  moved,  and  had  a  being'  since  the  lime- 
stone cliffs  of  Memphis  were  first  quarried  into  tombs."443 

Hence  it  is  legitimately  to  be  inferred,  that  those  geological  cata- 
clysms and  volcanic  dislocations  which,  in  Europe,  filled  caverns 
and  ossuaries  with  bones  of  extinct  genera  mingled  with  those  of 
man,  and  rolled  silex-implements  of  human  industry  into  French 
diluvial  drift  (supra),  occurred  at  an  age  anterior  to  the  settled  quiet- 
ness of  Miotic  economy ;  because,  a  few  decades  of  feet,  caused  by 
such  convulsions,  added  to  the  historical  level  of  Mediterranean 
waters,  would  have  left  abundant  marks  around  the  Memphite  pyra- 
mids ;  whereas,  nothing  of  the  kind  is  to  be  seen  there,  or  elsewhere, 
throughout  monumental  Egypt.444 

It  becomes,  therefore,  next  to  positive,  as  a  corollary  to  the  pre- 
ceding chain  of  facts,  that  man's  presence,  also  (judging  from  the 
rudeness  of  his  silex-arts)  then  in  his  childhood's  phase,  must,  in 
Europe,  antedate  even  human  infancy  on  the  Nile's  alluvium.  What 
vistas  of  antiquity  !  Archaeology,  having  herein  sufficiently  blown 
away  the  historical  fogs  and  scud  that,  in  nautical  phrase,  obstructed 
his  vision,  now  cheerfully  resigns  a  clean  spyglass  into  the  hands  of 
the  palaeontologist. 

442  Nash,  "On  the  origin  and  derivation  of  the  term  Copt,  and  the  name  of  Egypt;" 
Burke's  Ethnological  Journal,  April,  1849;  pp.  490-496: — Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  493-5. 

443  Gliddon,  Handbook  to  the  Nile,  London,  8vo,  Madden,  1849;  pp.  34-5. 

444  See  Lepsius,  Chronologie,  I,  p.  24  —  how  Herodotus  and  Plato  say  the  Egyptians  had 
never  heard  of  the  Hebrew  flood. 


SCO  THE     MONOGEKISTS    AND 


PART    V. 

"  Adam,  ante  mortem  ejus,  convocavit  omnes  filios  suos,  qui  grant  in  numero  XV 

milia  virorum  absque  mulieribus." 

(Vita  Ade  ct  Eve,  Anon.,  A.  D.  1460).  «= 

According  to  the  Hebrew  and  the  Samaritan  Texts,446  Adam  was 
only  130  years  old  at  the  birth  of  Seth,  his  third  son  ;  according  to 
the  Septuagint  Version,  and  to  Josephus,  his  age  was  then  230.*" 
In  either  case,  the  precise  year  is  fixed  by  Archbishop  Usher  at  b.  c. 
3874.448     "And  the  days  of  Adam  after  he  had  begotten  Seth  were 

445  Philomneste,  p.  37. 

446  Rev.  E.  B.  Elliott,  A.  M.,  Horce  Apocalyptical,  London,  8vo,  1846;  IV,  p.  254: — Hat- 
wood's  Von  Boiilen,  Introduction  to  Genesis,  II,  pp.  97-9. 

447  King  James's  version,  Genesis,  V,  3,  4,  5. 

448  We  have  seen  (supra,  note  263)  that  Tubal-Cain  is  the  God-Vulcan;  and  now  in  Seth 
it  is  easy  to  recognize,  through  Josephus  (Antiq.  Jud.,  I,  2,  &c),  and  the  dialectic  mutation 
of  S  into  T  aspirated,  the  God  TeT  of  the  Egyptians,  "author  of  letters"  (Bunsen,  Egypt's 
Place,  I,  pp.  393-5),  otherwise  Tautus,  or  Tholh;  not  to  be  any  longer  confounded,  as  he 
has  been  by  some,  with  SET  or  Typhon.  See  the  argument  of  Alfred  Maury  ("Personage 
de  la  Mort,"  Revue  Archeologique,  15  Aout,  1847,  pp.  325-6).  It  had  been  formerly  indicated 
( Types  of  Mankind,  p.  562)  that  the  mother  of  Seth,  before  she  was  named  Eve  (i.  e.  "  KAiUaH, 
because  she  was  the  mother  of  all  living,"  KAala;  Gen.  Ill,  20)  had  been  called  AiSAaH, 
ISE,  or  Isis,  who  was  famed  as  "  the  universal  mother."  It  has  been  likewise  shown  pre- 
viously (Types  of  Mankind,  p.  544),  why  the  patriarch  Enos  is  only  the  "God  of  the  vulgar." 

If  etymologies  are  to  be  sanctioned  in  the  explanation  of  primitive  myths,  the  above  four 
examples  of  Vulcan,  Thoih,  Isis,  and  Enos,  now  identified  among  the  antediluvian  progenitors 
of  mankind,  will  be  found  more  susceptible  of  historic  and  palasographical  justification  than 
the  learned  Mr.  Osburn's  unique  discoveries  (Monumental  History  of  Egypt,  London,  1854, 
I,  pp.  239-40,  245,  339-44)  of  Adam,  Noah,  Ham,  and  Mizraim,  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics ! 

Not  merely  (p.  222)  are  "  Scripture  Patriarchs  identified  with  Egyptian  Deities,"  but,  in 
his  ingenious  and  pious  book,  the  very  "  names  of  Goddesses  recorded  upon  the  monuments," 
are  declared  to  be  "those  of  the  wives  of  the  patriarchs;"  although  this  excellent  critic 
allows  that  "  they  are  not  preserved  in  the  Bible." 

To  the  same  class,  engendered  by  a  similar  monomania  for  "confirmations,"  in  defiance 
of  reason  and  historical  truth,  belongs  the  alleged  discovery  of  the  name  and  exploits  of 
Moses  in  contemporaneous  hieratic  scrolls  (Rev.  D.  J.  Heath,  M.  A.,  The  Exodus  Papyri, 
London,  1855), — as  if  the  English  translation  itself,  utterly  foreign  to  ancient  or  modern 
Egyptian  ideas,  did  not  sufficiently  betray  an  Englishman's  imposition  during  the  present 
century!  As  for  the  Rev.  C.  Fokster's  last  (A  Harmony  of  Primceval  Alphabets),  wherein 
there  is  not  a  single  hieroglyphic  drawn  with  even  childish  correctness,  nor  a  solitary  pho- 
netic value  exact,  they  fall  (together  with  his  Himyaritic,  Sinaic,  and  Assyrian  interpretations, 
&c.)  into  a  simpler  category, — that  of  downright  imposture.  The  self-deceptions,  or  per- 
haps "canards,"  of  M.  Barrois  (Dactylogie  et  Language  Primitif  reslitule  d'apres  les  Monu- 
ments, Paris,  4to,  1850),  have  hoaxed  even  His  Holiness  the  Pontiff  (Lecture  litterale  des 
Hieroglyphes  el  des  Cuneiformes,  Paris,  4to,  1853 ;  p.  36) :  but  being  harmless  pasquinades 
of  a  gentleman  who  pays  liberally  for  the  publication  of  his  own  books,  as  well  as  for  any 
clever  cheat  (Pulszky's  paper,  supra,  note  17,  Chap.  II)  that  "Chevaliers  d'industrie"  may 
foist  upon  his  credulity,  they  really  become  sublime,  viewed  in  comparison  with  some  of  the 
instances  of  fraud  or  hallucination  above  cited. 


THE     POL  YGENIST  S.  561 

eight  hundred  [LXX,  700]  years ;  and  lie  begat  sons  and  daughters ; 
— and  all  the  days  that  Adam  lived  were  nine  hundred  and  thirty 
years ;  and  he  died :"  leaving  a  rather  large  family,  if  we  credit  the 
biography,  above  cited,  that  his  children  numbered  15000  men  besides 
the  ivomen.  From  what  sources  his  second  biographer  gathered  these 
statistics  does  not  appear,  any  more  than  whence  the  so-called  Mosaic 
compiler  obtained  the  other  Adamic  particulars  recorded  in  Genesis. 
The  earlier  biography,  assuming  Archbishop  Usher's  dates  to  be  in- 
contestable, must  have  been  written  (Deuter.  XXXI,  9,  26,)  about  b.  c. 
1451;  or  some  1623  years  after  Adam's  decease, — an  event  which, 
taking  place  930  years  after  the  Creation,  ascertained  to  be  b.  c. 
4004,  occurred  in  b.  c.  3074.  The  author  of  the  "  Life  of  Adam  and 
Eve  "  lived,  it  is  true,  in  a.  d.  1460,  or  4534  years  after  Adam's  death ; 
but  any  one  who  believes  that  anecdotes  of  the  protopatriarch's  long 
life  could  have  been  preserved,  for  incorporation  into  the  PentSteuch, 
during  1623  years,  cannot  reasonably  deny  extension  of  the  same 
possibility  (1451  +  1460)  for  2911  years  longer.™ 

"We  need  not  be  astonished  either  at  the  number  of  Adam  and 
Eve's  children  during  800  years ;  because,  while,  on  the  one  hand, 
Cardinal  Wiseman450  and  the  Rev.  J.  Pye  Smith451  teach  how  physical 
causes  were  in  more  vehement  operation  before  the  "  Flood"  than 
after;  on  the  other,  the  multiplication  of  the  Jews  in  Egypt,  during  the 
430,  or  400,  or  215,  years  of  their  sojourn,  when  post-diluvial  physical 
causes  were  precisely  the  same  as  at  present,  is  equally  formidable, 
and  possesses  equal  claims  upon  credence.  Jacob  and  his  family,  in 
number  70,453  or  75,  persons,  settle  in  the  land  of  Goshen ;  and  their 
descendants  issue  forth  "about  600,000  men  on  foot,  without  the 
children,  and  a  mixed  multitude"453 — or  GouM-AaRaB,  Arab  levy  or 
horde.  Commentators  vary  in  their  estimates  of  the  number  of  souls, 
from  1,800,000  to  3,000,000;  nor  is  the  duration  of  the  sojourn  itself 
at  all  settled ; 454  but  the  latter  point  is  unimportant  to  my  present 
argument.     So  is  also  the  disproportionate  area  in  Eastern  lower 

In  making  these  assertions  upon  my  own  responsibility,  there  are  two  courses  left  open 
to  the  reader  who  cares  about  verification;  1st,  to  inquire  of  the  hierologists  in  charge  of 
the  Paris,  Berlin,  London,  or  Turin  Museums,  whether  they  do  not  support  these  repudia- 
tions ;  or  2d,  to  defray  the  printing  expenses  of  a  thorough  analysis  of  each  work  by  myself, 
although  I  think  "le  jeu  ne  vaut  pas  la  chandelle." 

449  I  am  merely  following,  with  a  little  more  minuteness,  the  orthodox  example  of  Dr.  H  all) 
Analytical  Synopsis,  London  ed.  of  Pickering's  Races,  1851,  p.  xxxv. 

450  Connection  between  Science  and  Revealed  Religion. 

451  Relation  between  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  Geological  Science,  3d.  ed. ,  London,  12mo,  1843; 
pp.  185,  243,  301,  340. 

452  Genesis,  XLVI,  27: — Cahen,  La  Bible,  trad.  nouv.  I,  pp.  162-4,  notes. 
4<a  Exodus,  XII,  37,  38:— Op.  cit.,  II,  p.  50,  note  37. 

154  Lepsius,  Chron.  der  JEgypler,  I,  pp.  315-17. 

36 


562  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Egypt  where  this  vast  population  of  bondsmen  is  supposed  to  have 
dwelt.  Now,  simultaneously  with  the  Israelitish  bondage,  their 
Egyptian  masters  embraced  at  least  5,000,000  of  population;455  the 
latter  were  the  oppressors  ;  the  former  oppressed, — to  such  an  abject 
and  inconceivable  degree,  that  they  allowed  even  their  first-born  to 
be  butchered  without  armed  revolt.  Nevertheless,  they  "multiplied 
exceedingly;"  in  consequence,  as  Eather  Kircher  states,456  of  the 
fecundative  properties  of  the  Mle.  A  simple  rule  of  three  will  test 
the  relative  ratio  of  increase. 

If  75  Jews,  in  a  given  number  of  years,  notwithstanding  the  most 
atrocious  and  attenuating  despotism,  multiply  so  as  to  leave  Egypt 
in  number  (say  the  lowest  figure)  1,800,000  souls ;  what,  during  the 
same  period,  in  the  same  climate,  and  favored  by  their  comfortable 
position  as  slaveholders,  instead  of  being  slaves,  was  the  statistical 
augmentation  of  5,000,000  of  Egyptians? 

There  is  no  reason,  therefore,  to  be  appalled  at  the  Rabbinical  es- 
timate of  the  number  of  Adam's  children  by  the  "universal  mother." 
Whatever  the  numerical  amount  may  have  been,  their  antediluvian 
descendants  were  drowned  in  the  Elood.  Noah,  Shem,  Ham,  and 
Japhet,  with  their  wives,  in  all  but  eight  individuals,  being  the  ouly 
persons  who  landed — B.C.  2348 — from  the  Ark  upon  Mount  Ararat, 
to  become  the  second  progenitors  of  Mankind. 

From  these  four  couples,  after  a  considerable  lapse  of  time  down 
to  the  middle  of  this  XTXth  century,  have  proceeded,  according  to 

(population   of  the  world.) 

Balbi 739  millions. 

Malte-Brun 800       " 

D'Halloy 750 

Eeynolds's  Chart 852       " 

Ravenstein's  Chart 1,216        " 

Inasmuch,  however,  as  we  are  yet  ignorant  of  the  interior  topo- 
graphy of  at  least  one-third  of  the  earth's  surface,  whilst  we  abso- 
lutely know  little  or  nothing  about  myriads  of  human  beings  in- 
habiting such  portions,  it  is  probable  that  Dr.  Gustaf  Kombst's 
beautiful  sheets457  contain  all  attainable  information,  and  to  these  I 

455  G-liddon,  Otia  JEgypliaca,  p.  73. 

456  "  Unde  foeminoe  non  uno,  duobus,  aut  tribus  contentse,  sed  sex,  septem  aut  octo  foetus 
unico  partu ;  quod  et  Hebrai  in  Exodum  commentatores  memorant,  subinde  effundebant. 
Nemini  igetur  miruni  esse  debet,  filiorum  Israel  spatio  ducentorum  prope  annorum,  quo 
-33gyptum  incolebant,  immensani  fuisse  propagationem :" — (Edipus  JEgyptiacus,  Rome,  fol., 
1652;  Tom.  I,  p.  52. 

457  "Ethnology,  or  the  different  nations  and  tribes  of  Man,  traced  according  to  Race, 
Language,  Religion,  and  Form  of  Government" — revised  and  extended  to  1854 ; — Johnston, 
Physical  Adas,  new  ed.,  Edinburgh,  1855 :  PI.  81,  with  six  pages  of  description. 


THE     POLYGEKISTS.  563 

beg  leave  to  refer  the  reader  for  collateral  statistics  bearing  upon  our 
"Ethnographic  Tableau." 

The  difficulties  experienced  for  many  years,  both  in  the  capacities 
of  lecturer  and  author,  to  popularize  some  branches  of  archaeological 
and  ethnographic  discoveries,  had  convinced  me  of  the  inadequacy 
of  oral  or  written  explanations  compared  with  the  rapid  and  convin- 
cing manner  in  which  audiences,  or  readers,  appreciate  knowledge 
when  accompanied  by  pictorial  illustrations.  It  was  my  intention, 
therefore,  upon  undertaking,  in  1854,  to  collect  in  Europe  materials 
for  my  contribution  to  the  present  volume,  to  furnish  an  Ethnological 
Map,  through  which  the  differences  and  similarities,  the  divergencies 
and  gradations,  of  the  bestknown  races  of  men  could  be  seized  by  the 
eye  at  a  glance.  Taught  also  by  travel,  comparison,  and  study,  that 
systems  and  classifications,  hitherto  advanced  under  the  sanction  of 
eminent  names,  are  open  to  the  grave  objection  of  being  premature  in 
the  present  stage  of  knowledge,  most  of  them  having  been  conceived 
by  anticipation  of  the  facts,  my  purpose  was  to  avoid  them  all :  and 
neither  to  take  the  word  "  Caucasian"458  as  comprehending  number- 
less distinct  types  of  man,  stretched  out  geographically  from  Scan- 
dinavia to  the  Dekhan ;  nor  the  still  more  misapplicable  term  "  Tou- 
ranian,"459  through  which  a  modern  linguistic  school  agglomerates, 
into  one  unaccountable  mass,  the  1001  different  languages  that  happen 
to  be  neither  Semitic  nor  Indo-Ger manic.  It  is  through  the  misuse 
of  well-defined  specific  appellatives,  and  their  transposition  into 
generic  senses,  coupled  with  a  sort  of  philological  "thimble-rig," 
which  strives  to  conceal  individual  ignorance, — when,  in  reality,  this 
ignorance  is  universal — that  the  "public  mind,"  uncritical  and  spell- 
bound by  authority,  as  it  necessarily  must  be,  consoles  itself  with  the 
notion  that  the  "  unity  of  the  human  species"  is  demonstrated,  partly 
because  Cuvier  arbitrarily  grouped  all  humanity  into  three  grand 
classes,  Caucasian,  Mongolian,  and  Ethiopian  ;m  and  partly  because 
the  excellent  Sanscrit  scholar,  Prof.  Max-Miiller,  chooses  to  divide 

158  First  used  by  Blumenbach,  for  convenience'  sake,  in  eranioscopie  subdivisions. 

459  Invented  first  and  applied  to  ethnology  by  Prichard,  I  believe  (Researches) ;  it  is  time 
that  this  unlucky  term  should  be  brought  back  to  its  primitive  historical  meaning. 

460  Caucasian,  from  Kauk-Asos,  means  only  the  "mountain  of  the  Asi,"  or  "Asi  of  the 
mountain;"  referring  to  a  special  nation  (As,  Os,  Ossetes)  on  the  Caucasian  range.  Mongol 
meant  "  brave,  haughty,"  and  was  the  peculiar  honorific  title  of  the  golden  horde  of  Ginghis- 
khan.  Ethiopian,  from  Aithiops,  signified  only  a  "sun-burnt  face,"  and,  in  Homeric  times, 
indicated  merely  all  nations  darker  than  Greeks ;  to  the  exclusion  of  negro  races,  at  that 
period  unknown  to  the  fair-skinned  Hellenes.  To  classify  Egyptians,  Dravidians,  and 
Basques,  as  if  they  had  ever  been  one  family,  instead  of  three  distinct  types,  under  the  namo 
"  Caucasian,"  which  in  no  respect  suits  any  of  them  ;■ — to  include  Lapps  and  Siamese  within 
the  designation  "  Mongolian,"  foreign  and  remote  alike  from  both  :  —  or  to  embrace  under 
the  appellation  of  "sun-burnt  faces"  (that  is,  only  tanned  or  swarthy)  African  Negroes, 


564  THE    MONO-GEN  ISTS    AND 

languages  in  general  "into  three  families,  which  have  heen  called 
the  Semitic,  the  Avian,  and  the  Turanian." i&l 

In  order  to  explain  the  grounds  of  objection,  one  must  digress 
for  a  moment  upon  these  three  terms.  With  the  reservations  of 
Renan,462  and  as  the  synonym  of  Syro-Arabian  in  its  application  to 
languages  alone,  the  name  "Semitic"  is  probably  the  best  discover- 
able ;  but,  when  applied  physiologically63  to  pure  Nigritian  families 
on  the  Mozambique  no  less  than  on  the  Guinea  coasts,  its  adoption 
is  delusive,  because  it  extends  the  area  of  true  Shemite  amalgama- 
tions with  African  tribes  far  beyond  legitimate  induction ;  and 
suggests  intermixture  as  the  cause  of  really -insignificant  facial 
resemblances  between  some  races  of  negroes  and  the  Arabians, 
without  taking  incompatibilities  of  color,  form,  hair,  and  endless 
dissimilar  facts,  into  account.  The  law  of  gradation  sufficiently 
explains  these  very  questionable  analogies,464  upon  which  mono- 
genists  alone  lay  stress, — more  frequently  from  sentiment  than  from 
evidence. 

"With  the  word  "Arian,"  as  employed  by  Prof.  Max-Miiller,  it 
would  ill-become  me  to  dissent  when  selected  by  so  great  a  master 
in  Sanscritic  lore.  On  the  contrary,  science  is  unanimous  in  its 
adoption,  which  his  learned  note465  amply  justifies;  but  it  is  with 
the  wide  extension  given  to  "Turanian"  that  my  quarrel  lies.  What 
is  its  origin  ?     What  its  meaning  ?     What  its  antiquity  ? 

In  the  trilinguar  inscriptions  of  the  (a.  d.  223-636)  Sassanian 
dynasty,466  the  Persian  monarchs  assume  in  Greek  the  titles  "  Kings 
Apiavuv  xai  Avapiavuv"  —  i.e.,  of  Iranians  and  non- Iranians j  equivalent 

Oceanic  Papuas,  and  American  Indians, — such  nomenclature  leads  to  nothing  but  mystifica- 
tion in  the  study  of  Man.  I  might  likewise  note  the  vagueness  of  Negro,  Pafuan  and  Indian, 
in  ethnography. 

<o  Languages  of  the  Seat  of  War,  1855,  p.  23,  86-95: — and  in  Bunsen's  Outlines,  1854,  I, 
pp.  238,  342-486.  In  the  former  work,  our  erudite  linguist  actually  speaks  of  the  "descend- 
ants of  Tur  (p.  87)" !  In  the  latter,  the  biblico-Kur'anic  harmonizings  of  Aboo  '1-Ghazee 
about  "  Tur  and  Japheth"  are  accepted  as  historical!     Compare  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  476. 

462  Langue  Semitiques,  1855,  p.  2. 

463  Norris,  in  Prichard's  Nat.  Hist.,  1855,  pp.  420-7.  Serres,  Races  negres  de  VAfrique 
Orientate,  Comples  Rendus  de  VAcad.  des  Sciences,  XXX,  June,  1850,  pp.  7-8,  13.  I  have 
Been  some  of  M.  de  Froberville's  casts,  and  must  protest  against  M.  Serres's  Keport  that 
they  are  of  a  type  "  mfitis  semitiques:"  nor,  in  view  of  my  twenty-years'  familiarity  with 
Semitic  races  and  their  hybrids  in  Africa  and  Asia,  —  and  fifteen  years  of  observation  of 
mulattoes  in  America  —  am  I  disposed  to  accept  the  "  ipse  dixit"  of  an  Academician,  who 
never  had  opportunity  of  seeing  a  dozen  living  specimens  of  "metis  semitiques"  in  all  his 
life,  against  my  own  experience  amongst  thousands. 

404  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  180,  186,  191,  209-10. 

480  Op.  cit.,  pp.  27-9:  —  Compare  Bergmann,  Peuples  Primitifs  de  la  Race  de  Jafelc, 
Colmar,  8vo,  1853,  pp.  10-20. 

466  De  Sacy,  Me'moire  sur  diverses  Antiquites  de  la  Perse,  et  sur  les  Me'daillcs  des  Rois  de  la 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  565 

to  Persians  and  those  who  were  not  Persians.  Erne  centuries  pre- 
viously, in  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Persepolis,467  Darius  speaks 
of  Hariva,  Aria,  —  calling  Persia,  Parsa  ;  hut  at  neither  period  does 
the  word  "  Tur"  yet  figure  as  the  equivalent  for  now-Iranian :  nor 
does  it  occur  in  earlier  writings  than  Firdoozee's  Shah-Nameh, 
"Book  of  Kings"  composed  in  the  lOth-llth  century.  Conceding 
that  the  immortal  bard  was  versed  in  traditions  that  survived  the 
wreck  of  Persic  literature  after  the  fall  of  Yezdegerd,  it  will  hardly 
be  claimed  that  "  Tur"  is  an  historical  personage  instead  of  a  mythic 
personification  of  Scythic,  i.e.,  non-Persian,  nations.468  Oriental 
writers  understand,  by  Avians,  or  "people  of  Iran,"  the  inhabitants 
of  lands  enclosed  by  the  Euphrates,  Persian  Gulf,  Indus,  and  Gihon  ; 
and  by  Touranians,  barbarians,  —  "adjem"  or  foreigners,  like  the 
Gfoim,  gentiles,  of  the  Hebrews :  so  that  Airan  and  Aniran,  or  Iran 
and  Touran,  signify  only  Persia  contrasted  with  Turkestan.  "Moul- 
lah  Firoze,  a  learned  Parsee  of  Bombay,  explains  the  name  of  Airan 
to  be  derived  from  that  of  Believer ;  and  that  of  Anairan,  meaning 
Unbelievers."469  The  same  senses  may  be  gathered  from  the  Zend- 
Avesta  and  the  Boun-dehesch-Pehlvi,470  wherein  praises  and  vic- 
tories are  the  appanage  of  Eeriene  Veedjo,  the  "Pure  Iran;"  curses 
and  defeats  that  of  Touran.  But  these  Parsee  codes  themselves  are 
not  of  high  antiquity. 

If  Firdoozee's  grand  epic  be  consulted,  which  purports  to  define 
the  history  of  Persia  from  the  tauro-kephalic  Ka'iumurts  during  3600 
years  down  to  the  Saracenic  invasion,  a  poem  itself  also  replete  with 
alterations  by  copyists,471  one  perceives  at  once  how  the  mythical  Fe- 
ridoon  divided  the  empire  among  his  three  sons,  —  "To  Selim  he 
gave  Piiim  and  Khawer;  to  Tur,  Turan;  and  to  Irij,  Iran  or  Per- 

dynasties  des  Sassanides,  Paris,  4to,  1793 ;  pp.  12,  31,  64,  PI.  Inscrip.  A.  3  ;  and  pp.  47,  55—60, 
183.  "Iran  we  Turan"  does  occur  among  Persian  inscriptions  at  Tchehil-minar ;  but 
their  date  is  Hedjra  826,  a.  d.  1423,  —  or  long  subsequently  to  Firdoozee. 

467  Rawlinson,  Behistun,  1846,  pp.  i-xxxix. 

468  "  Iran  aut  Ilan  est  Persia  culturi  zoroastrico  addicta,  orthodoxa ;  Aniran  s.  Anilan 
sunt  provincial  extranea?,  Sassanidarum  imperio  subjectae,  quae  quoque  nomine  Turan,  i.  e. 
Transoxana,  a  scriptoribus  orientalibus  appellantur,  quarum  incolae  ab  ignicolis  vel  hae- 
retici,  ve)  irreligiosi  habiti  sunt:"  (Tychsen,  De  Cuneatis  Inscriplionibus  Persepolitanis 
lucvbratio,  Rostock,  1798,  p.  41,  note). 

469  Ker  Pobtek,  Travels  in  Georgia,  Persia,  &c,  London,  4to,  1821;  II,  p.  189:  — 
compare  Richardson,  Dictionary,  Persian,  Arabic,  and  English,  London,  1806,  I,  p.  313, 
voce  "  Turan." 

*">  Anquetil  du  Perron,  Zend-Avesta,  Paris,  4to,  1771 ;  I.  Part  1,  pp.  16,  20,  26;  II. 
preface,  p.  348  seq. :  —  compare,  for  significations  of  "Airan,"  St.  Martin,  Memoires  hislo- 
riques  sur  V  Arminie,  Paris,  1818;  I.  pp.  271-8. 

471  Ouselet,  Travels,  3;c.  in  Persia,  London,  4to,  1819;  I.  Preface,  p.  viii.,  and  note  5 — 
"upon  an  average  thirty  different  readings  in  every  page." 


566  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

sia."472  Hence  it  becomes  obvious  tbat  the  Persian  poet,  like  the 
Chaldasan  chorographer  of  Xth  Genesis,  in  all  his  ethnic  personifica- 
tions, anthropomorphosized  a  country  currently  known  as  "Turan" 
into  an  ideal  king  Tiir.  His  translator  observes  that,  ancient  Scythia 
embraced  the  whole  of  Turan,  which  appellative  was  but  an  early 
synonym  for  Turkestan ;  in  this,  coinciding  with  Dubeux.473  The 
same  legend,  slightly  varied,  reaches  us  through  Mirkavend,474  who 
died  about  Hedjra  903=a.  d.  1498,  viz :  that  Tur  received  Turkestin 
as  his  patrimony  from  Feridoon,  and  then  conspired  with  Seleem  to 
murder  their  brother  Tradj,  king  of  Iran-Shehr :  alluding  doubtless, 
through  an  Oriental  allegory  of  three  men,  to  simultaneous  attacks 
of  Semitic  and  Scythic  invaders  upon  the  lion-standard  of  Persia. 

Being  Persian  designations,  "Iran  and  Touran"  must  receive 
solution  through  Arian  etymologies ; 475  and  these  are  furnished  in 
one  paragraph  by  Bbrgmanh,476  who  as  a  favored  pupil  of  Eugene 
Burnouf  inspires  every  confidence. 

"Thus,  in  the  same  manner  that  the  Hindoos,  particularly  at  the 
sacerdotal  point  of  view  of  the  Brahmans,  called  their  country  by  the 
name  of  Aryd  (Honorable),  or  of  Arydvartta  (Honorable  country),  in 
opposition  to  the  heretical  countries  named  Turya  (Persian  Utt-dryd, 

472  The  Shah-Nameh  of  Firdausi,  Transl.  Atkinson,  London,  1832;  pp.  50,  161-2,  and  p. 
519,  note: — of.  Rlapkoth  "  Histoire  de  l'Anoienne  Perse,  d'apres  Firdoussi,"  in  which  the 
age  of  the  2d  (Kai'anian)  dynasty  is  taken  at  s.  c.  803,  and  the  1st  (Pishdadian)  as  com- 
mencing 3342  years  previously !     Tableaux,  pp.  3-4,  5-22. 

473  Perse,  Univ.  Pittor.,  p.  225. 

474  Mikkhond,  History  of  the  Early  Kings  of  Persia,  transl.  Shea,  London,  8vo,  1832, 
pp.  138-86. 

475 1  incline  to  think,  notwithstanding,  that  the  enigma  of  the  well-known  andro-leontine 
and  andro-taurine  sphinxes  of  Persepolis,  and  possibly  also  those  of  earlier  Assyria,  can  be, 
in  part,  explained  through  Iran  and  Touran,  as  understood  in  three  languages,  Arian,  Se- 
mitic, and  Scythic ;  corresponding  to  the  three  forms  of  Achsemenian  cuneatics,  and  to  the 
triple  medley  of  three  types  of  man,  Arabian,  Persian,  and  Turkish,  in  the  same  countries 
at  this  day.  Thus,  in  the  first  class  of  tongues,  IR-an,  as  Zion-land  "par  excellence"  (always 
the  heraldic  symbol  of  Persia,  and  blended  into  her  monarch's  names  in  the  form  of  "  sheer'n 
contrasts  with  TOUR-an,  Bull-land ;  which,  on  the  one  side,  is  found  in  A-TUR,  Ashour,  As- 
syria,— and  on  the  other  applies  to  the  ancient  zoological  conditions  of  Mawaranuhar,  &c. 
where  wild  cattle  were  enormously  abundant,  whence  Tour  became  the  figurative  emblem 
of  barbarous  7V7--kish  races  ?  But,  with  an  indication  that,  in  Scythic  tongues,  IR  means 
also  man,  a  curious  inquiry,  that  could  be  justified  only  through  many  pages  of  elucidation, 
is  submitted  to  the  consideration  of  fellow-students  of  archaeology. 

476  Les  Peuples  Primitifs  de  la  Race  de  Iaph&te :  JBsquisse  Ethnogenialogique  et  hisiorique ; 
Colmar,  8vo.,  1853;  p.  17: — Cf.  Max  Muilek's  note  in  Bunsen,  Three  Linguistic  Disserta- 
tions, 1848,  p.  296. 

De  Saulct,  I  find,  read  "Iran,  de  l'Iran"  upon  the  inscriptions  copied  by  the  unfortu- 
nate Schulz,  at  Lake  Van,  10  years  ago  (Secherches  sur  Vecriture  Cuneiforme  Assyrienne, 
Paris,  1848,  p.  26):  whilst  a  writer  in  the  London  Literary  Gazette  (1852,  p.  610)  said  that 
he  deciphered  "Lordship  of  Irak  and  Iran"  as  well  as  "Lordship  of  Turan,"  on  bricks  in 
the  British  Museum.     I  have  heard  of  no  confirmation  of  the  latter  statement. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  567 

Outside  of  Aria,  or  Tu-dryd,  Separated  from  Aria),  and  that  they 
termed  themselves  Aryds  as  opposed  to  Mletchas  (Feebles,  Barbarians, 
Heretics ;  ep.  Heb.  Gfoyim,  Peoples,  Strangers,  Arabic  el-aadjim, 
"Wretches,  Barbarous),  so  likewise  the  Persians  \Pahlavas — Sanscrit 
paraeus,  Gr.  pelekus,  hatchet ;  Pahlavdn  =  hatchet-bearers]  designated 
themselves  Aries  or  Artaes  (Gentiles,  Herodot.  VII.  61) :  and,  in 
imitation  of  the  Zend  names  Airydo,  and  of  Tu-irya  or  An-airyao- 
danghdvo  (Country  not-honorable),  they  also  gave  the  name  Ariana 
(Gr.  Ariane),  and  later  that  of  Iran,  to  all  countries  situate  between 
the.  Tigris  and  the  Indus,  and  between  the  Oxus  and  the  Indian 
Ocean,  because  they  were  inhabited  by  orthodox  Arians,  worship- 
pers of  Ormuzd  (Zend.  Ahuro  mazddo,  Great  genius  of  the  sun) ; 
whereas  the  misbelieving  lands  to  the  north  and  east,  which  were 
held  to  be  the  abode  of  Ahriman  (Zend.  Agra-mainyus),  were  called 
Anirdn  (rJon-Iran)  or  Turdn  (Ultra-Iran)." 

The  antiquity  of  the  word  Tour  an  being  thus  brought  down  to 
recent  post-Christian  times  in  all  books  wherein  it  occurs, — -its  signi- 
fication being  imbued  with  the  theological  xenolasia  of  Mazdseans 
and  Brahmans,  and  naturally  restricted  in  application  to  Scythic 
hordes  immediately  contiguous  to  Aria,  or  Ariana — modern  ethno- 
logy has  no  more  right  to  extend  its  area  all  over  the  world,  than  to 
classify  the  xanthous  Gaul  of  Cassar's  time  with  the  melanie  Tamou- 
lian  of  the  present  Dekhan,  together  with  red-headed  Highlanders 
and  raven-locked  Wakabees,  under  the  other  false  term  "  Cauca- 
sian." Indeed,  before  agreeing  with  Prof.  Max  Miiller  (whose  autho- 
rity is  unquestionably  the  highest  for  its  use),  in  tolerating  the  cor- 
rupted myths  of  Sheeite  Persia  as  historical ;  or  talk  of  the  "  de- 
scendants of  Tur"  as  if  such  metaphorical  personage  had  really  been 
father  of  those  "Turanian  tribes"  which — since  spread  broadcast  over 
the  earth  through  this  hypothesis — are  now  said  to  speak  only  "  Tu- 
ranian languages,"  I  should  feel  warranted  in  accepting,  as  a  legiti- 
mate basis  for  ethnic  nomenclature,  that  exquisite  travesty  of  a  lost 
book  of  Diodorus ;  wherein  the  Greek  text  makes  it  evident,  "  How 
Britain,  son  of  Jupiter  and  Paint,  peopled  the  island  [of  England]  ; 
but  some  say  that  Briton  was  indigenous,  and  Paint  (Aiog  xai  Xpw/jwu) 
his  daughter: — how  Briton  received  Roman  as  his  guest,"  &c.  ;m  or 
else,  in  considering  Hiawatha  a  true  portraiture  of  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  an  American  savage,  instead  of  seeing  in  it  merely  the 
romantic  ideal  of  a  great  Anglo-Saxon  poet. 

1,7  Pkof.  Henry  Malden,  "On  pragmatized  legends  in  History  —  Fragments  from  the 
Vlllth  book  of  Diodorus,  concerning  Britain  and  her  colonies" — Trans.  Philol.  Soc,  Lon- 
don, Nov.  1854;  pp.  217-28.  For  pious  forgeries  in  quoting  and  rendering  Diodorus's  text, 
compare  Miot's  expose  in  Bibliolheque  Hislorique,  Paris,  1834;  pp.  189-90,  429. 


568  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

Touran  possesses  no  historical  sense  but  that  of  non-Persian  (Ani- 
ranian)  ethnologically :  none  but  that  of  Turkestan  geographically. 
It  were  as  reasonable  to  divide  Asiatic  and  European  humanity  into 
Semitic,  British  (for  Avian),  and  non-British  (for  everybody  else  not 
compressible  into  such  Procrustean  bed),  as  to  classify  all  these  mul- 
tiform nations  into  Semitic,  Arian  (i.  e.  Persian)  and  Turanian ; 
when  this  last  adjective  suits,  strictly  speaking,  no  human  group  of 
families  but  the  Turkish. 

Nevertheless,  like  Shakspeare's  "word  'occupy,'  which  was  an 
excellent  good  word  before  it  was  ill-sorted,"  m  "  Touranian"  may  still 
do  some  effective  service  in  specifying,  whenever  their  ethnic  rela- 
tions become  sufficiently  cleared  up,479  the  ancient  inhabitants  of 
countries  now  termed  Turkestan :  but,  because  "  agglutination" 
happens  to  be  their  linguistic  attribute,  in  common  even  with 
Hebrew  (Semitic),  and  Sanscrit  (Arian),  and  all  human  speech  in  its 
earlier  formations:  or  because  "in  them  the  conjugation  and  the 
declension  can  still  be  taken  to  pieces,"  preserving  all  the  while  the 
radical  syllable  of  the  discourse,480  —  it  does  seem  to  me,  that  to 
classify,  on  such  grounds  alone,  the  transplanted  and  now  prodi- 
giously-intermixed descendants  of  Hioung-nou,  Sian-pi,  San-miao 
or  Miao-tse,  Tata,  Yue-tchi,  Ting-lings,  Geou-gen,  Thiu-kiu,  and  other 
indigenous  races  (every  one  according  to  physiological  descriptions 
distinct  from  the  rest)  known  in  ancient  Asia  to  the  Chinese,4"1  under 
such  a  misnomer  as  "Turanian;"  to  forget  that  primitive  and 
indefinable  Scythia  has  vomited  forth  upon  Europe  men  of  absolutely 
different  stocks  and  unfixed  derivations  —  Huns,  white  and  nearly 
black,  Kliazars,  Awars,  Comans,  Alains,  &c. —  or  finally,  to  connect, 
through  one  omnific  name,  Samoyeds  with  Athapascans  (if  not  also 
with  Toltecs  and  Botocudos !),  hybrid  Osmanlees  with  pure  A'inos, 
Madjars  with  Telingas,482 — these  are  aberrations  from  common  sense 

478  Henry  IV,  2d  part,  Act  II,  scene  4. 

*n  For  the  real  difficulties,  slurred  over  by  English  ethnographers,  see  Klaproth  and 
Desmoulins. 

480  Incomparably  well  indicated  by  the  Turkish  verb  "sev-mek;"  Max-Muller,  op.  cit., 
pp.  111-4. 

481  The  most  copious  account  of  these  nations,  compiled  from  the  best  sources,  is  in 
Jardot,  Revolutions  des  Peuples  de  I'Asie  Moyenne,  Paris,  2  vols.  8vo,  1839.  The  Arabs,  let 
me  here  mention,  did  not  reach  Chinese  vicinities,  through  navigation,  before  the  9th 
century  (Maury,  "Examen  de  la  route  que  suivaient,  au  IXe  siecle  de  notre  ere,  les 
Arabes  et  les  Persans  pour  aller  en  Chine" — Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  de  Geographie,  Avril,  1846). 

482  Physical  amalgamation  -with  higher  types,  than  any  branch  of  the  Turkish  family  was 
in  the  days  of  Alp  Arslan,  has  transmuted  his  mongrel  descendants  residing  around  the 
Mediterranean,  Archipelago,  and  Black  Sea,  to  such  an  amazing  extent  that  it  is  difficult 
to  describe  what  a  real  Turk  (and  I  have  lived  where  thousands  of  all  grades  reside)  should 
be.  That  the  present  Caucasianized  Osmanlee  is  not  the  same  animal  now  that  his  fore- 
fathers were  only  in  the  12th  century,  is  easily  proved.     Benjamin  de  Tudela  — speaking 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  569 

into  which  Bunsen's  endorsement  of  Prichard's  "  Touranian"  has 
led  an  amazing  number  of  worthy  monogenists  on  this  side  of  the 
water ;  hut  which  Prof.  Max-Muller  himself  never  contemplated  in 
adopting  this  unlucky  term :  for  the  very  learned  philologist  ex- 
cludes the  Chinese,4113  and  doubtless  withholds  other  An-Arian  types 
of  mankind  from  his  Turanian  arrangement. 

It  appears  to  be  the  unavoidable  fate  of  every  human  science  to 
pass  through  a  phase  of  empiricism.  Each  one,  at  some  time  or 
other,  is  regarded  as  a  sort  of  universal  panacea  competent  to  heal 
all  controversial  sores.  Such,  at  this  moment,  throughout  Anglo- 
Saxondom,  is  the  popular  opinion  concerning  "Philology:"  last 
refuge  for  alarmed  protestant  monogenism, —  at  the  very  time  that 
Continental  scholarship  has  stepped  into  a  higher  sphere  of  linguistic 
philosophy,  which  already  recognizes  the  total  inadequacy  of  philo- 
logy (or  other  science)  to  solve  the  dilemma  whether  humanity 
originates  in  one  human  pair,  or  has  emanated  from  a  plurality  of 
zoological  centres.  Philology,  instead  of  being  ethnology,  is  only 
one  instrument,  if  even  a  most  precious  one,  out  of  many  other  tools 
indispensable  in  ethnological  researches.  The  powers  of  the  science 
termed  "la  linguistique"  are  not  infinite,  even  supposing  that 
correct  knowledge  had  as  yet  been  obtained  of  even  one-half  the 
tongues  spoken  over  the  earth ;  or  that  it  were  within  the  capacity 
of  one  man  to  become  sufficiently  acquainted  with  the  grammatical 
characteristics  of  the  remainder.  We  do  not  even  possess  a  complete 
catalogue  of  the  names  of  all  tongues  !4&4  Yet,  "What  studious  man 
is  there,"  inquires  Le  Clerc,  "whose  imagination  has  not  been  caught 
straying  from  conjecture  to  conjecture,  from  century  to  century,  in 
search  of  the  debris  of  a  forgotten  tongue ;  of  those  relics  of  words 
that  are  but  the  fragments  of  the  history  of  Nations  ?" JS5  Eichhoff 
eloquently  continues  the  idea — "The  sciences  of  Philology  and 
History  ever  march  in  concert,  and  the  one  lends  its  support  to  the 
other ;  because  the  life  of  Nations  manifests  itself  in  their  language, 
the  faithful  representative  of  their  vicissitudes.  Where  national 
chronology  stops  short,  where  the  thread  of  tradition  is  broken,  the 
antique  genealogy  of  words  that  have  survived  the  reign  of  empires 

of  Tartar  flat-noses — narrates,  "The  king  of  Persia  being  enraged  at  the  Turks,  who  have 
two  holes  in  the  midst  of  their  face  instead  of  a  nose,  for  having  plundered  his  kingdom, 
resolved  to  pursue  them."     (Basnage,  Hist,  of  the  Jews,  p.  473). 

483  Op.  cil.,  pp.  86,  95-6.  I  refer  to  this  admirable  work  in  preference  to  "  Phonology" 
in  Bunsen's  Outlines,  because  the  latter  has  been  disposed  of  by  Renan  (supra,  note  16). 

481  Adelung  (Catalogue,  St.  Petersburg,  1820,  p.  185)  counted  3,064  languages:  Balbi 
enumerated  860  languages  and  5000  dialects.  The  greatest  linguist  on  record,  Cardinal 
Mezzofanti,  was  acquainted,  it  is  said,  with  but  52. 

185  Olia  JEgyptiaca,  p.  12. 


570  THE    MONOGEBISTS    AND 

comes  in  to  shed  light  upon  the  very  cradle  of  humanity,  and  to 
consecrate  the  memory  of  generations  long  since  engulphed  in  the 
quicksands  of  time."  Thus  much  is  certainly  within  the  competency 
of  "philology;"  and  we  may  concede  to  it  also  the  faculty,,  where  the 
historic  elements  for  comparison  exist — as  in  the  range  of  Indo-ger- 
manic,  Semitic,  and  some  few  other  well-studied  groups  of  tongues — 
of  ascertaining  relationships  of  intercourse  between  widely-separate 
families  of  man ;  but  not  always,  as  it  is  fashionable  now  to  claim, 
and  which  I  will  presently  show  to  be  absurd,  of  a  community  of 
origin  between  two  given  races  physiologically  and  geographically 
distinct.  Again,  no  tongue  is  permanent.  More  than  150  years  ago, 
Richard  Bentley,  perhaps  the  greatest  critic  of  his  age,486  exemplified 
this  axiom  while  unmasking  the  Greek  forgeries  of  Alexandrian 
sophists.  "  Every  living  language,  like  the  perspiring  bodies  of  living 
creatures,  is  in  perpetual  motion  and  alteration  ;  some  words  go  off, 
and  become  obsolete ;  others  are  taken  in,  and  by  degrees  grow  into 
common  use ;  or  the  same  word  is  inverted  in  a  new  sense  and  notion, 
which  in  tract  of  time  makes  as  observable  a  change  in  the  air  and 
features  of  a  language,  as  age  makes  in  the  lines  and  mien  of  a  face. 
All  are  sensible  of  this  in  their  own  native  tongues,  where  continual 
use  makes  a  man  a  critic."  But,  at  the  same  time  that  this  is  the 
law  deduced  from  the  historical  evidences  of  written  languages,  its 
action  is  enormously  accelerated  among  petty  barbarous  tribes,  such 
as  a  few  Asiatic,  many  African,  several  American,  and  still  more 
frequently  among  the  Malayan,  and  Oceanico-Australian  races. 
Here,  mere  linguistic  land-marks  are  as  often  completely  effaced  as 
re-established ;  while  the  typical  characteristics  of  the  race  endure, 
and  therefore  can  alone  serve  as  bases  for  ethnic  classification.  Yet 
we  read  every  day  in  some  shape  or  other : 

"  The  decision  of  the  Academy  (of  St.  Petersburg,  40  years  ago) 
was,  however,  quite  unreserved  upon  this  point ;  for  it  maintains  its 
conviction,  after  a  long  research,  that  all  languages  are  to  be  considered 
as  dialects  (of  one)  now  lost."487  This  enunciation  of  an  eminent 
Cardinal,  although  dating  some  20  years  back,  is  still  quoted  and 
re-quoted  by  thankful  imbecility  which,  on  any  other  point  of  doc- 
trine, would  shudder  at  Romanist  authority.  And  it  excites  Homeric 
smiles  among  those  who  happen  to  know  the  estimation  in  which 
Egyptologists  now  hold  M.  de  Goulianoff's  Archeologie  egyptienne  and 
Acrologie,  to  see  his  report  to  the  Russian  Academy  used  as  a  dog- 
matical finality  to  further  linguistic  advancement!     In  England  he 

486  Dissertations  upon  the  Epistles  of  Pkalaris,  Themislocles,  Socrates,  Euripides,  and  upon  the 
Fables  of  JEsop  (1699);  Dyce's  ed.,  London,  8vo,  1836;  II,  p.  1. 

487  Wiseman,  Connection,  &c,  2d  ed.,  8vo,  London,  1842 ;  pp.  68-9.  , 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  571 

has  been  succeeded  by  a  school  which  discards  the  term  "race"  alto- 
gether ;  because  its  Oracle,  after  an  amazing  number  of  contradict- 
ory propositions,  has  latterly  stated488  how  "he  believes  that  all  the 
varieties  of  man  are  referable  to  a  single  species,"  as  per  catalogue, 
Luke  Burke  judiciously  comments,  of  barbarian  vocabularies. 

One  recipe,  for  attaining  expeditiously  a  conclusion  so  devoutly 
wished,  is  simple  enough.  It  is  the  following: — 1st,  to  start  with 
king  James's  version  of  Genesis,  Chapter  IV,  verse  25 : — 2d,  to  jump 
over  4730  years  that  an  Archbishop  says  have  elapsed  from  that  day 
to  this,  and  take  the  population  descended  from  "Adam  and  Eve"  to 
be  now  exactly  1,216,670,000  :m — 3d,  to  invent  a  sort  of  frame-work 
(say  "escritoire")  containing  precisely  9  pigeon-holes: — 4th,  to  label 
them  Monosyllabic,  Turanian,  Caucasian  (alias  Dioscurian,  said  to  be 
the  same  thing),  Persian,  Indian,  Oceanic,  American,  African,  and 
European :  —  5th,  disregarding  such  trifles  as  history,  anatomy,  or 
physiological  distinctions,  to  squeeze  all  humanity,  "  as  per  vocabu- 
lary," into  these  9  compartments: — 6th,  to  chant  "te  Deum"  over  the 
whole  performance; — and  lastly,  7th,  to  baptize  as  infidels  those  who 
disbelieve  the  "unity  of  the  human  species"  to  be  proved  by  any 
such  hocus-pocus,  or  arbitrary  methods  of  establishing  that  of  which 
Science,  at  the  present  day,  owing  to  insufficiency  of  materials, 
humbly  confesses  herself  to  be  ignorant ;  whilst  she  indignantly  re- 
pudiates, as  impertinent  and  mendacious,  the  suppression  of  all  facts 
that  are  too  three-cornered  to  be  jammed  into  the  9  pigeon-holes  afore- 
said. Such,  in  sober  sadness,  is  the  effect  produced  upon  the  minds 
of  unbiassed  anthropologists,  by  this  unscientific  system.  They  can- 
not, for  the  life  of  them,  as  concerns  real  ethnology,  where  the  theo- 
loger  sees  in  each  of  these  9  pigeon-holes  a  wondrous  "  confirmation," 
perceive  in  the  whole  arrangement  anything  more  than  a  reflex  of 
the  mind  of  their  ingenious  inventor.  What  true  philological  science 
has  achieved,  in  the  6th  year  after  the  middle  of  our  XlXth  century, 
may  be  studied  in  M.  Alfred  Maury's  Chapter  I  of  this  volume.  Its 
results  do  not  appear  to  favor  monogenistic  theories  of  human  lan- 
guage. 

It  is  with  the  express  object  of  avoiding  this,  or  any  other  unnatural 
system,  that  my  "Ethnographic  Tableau"  has  been  prepared.  Typo- 
graphical exigencies  compel  an  appearance,  I  must  allow,  of  arbitrary 
classification :  but  no  definitive  bar  to  progress  is  intended  by  its 
arrangement;  and  I  shall  be  proud  to  follow  any  better  that  impartial 
inquiries  into  Nature's  laws  may  in  the  future  elicit.     Such  as  this 

488  London  Athenaeum,  June  17,  1854. 

489  Ravenstein,  Descriptive  Notes,  and  Ethnographical  Map  of  the  World,  London,   185-4 ; 
pp.  2-4. 


572  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

"Tableau"  may  be,  it  is  the  result  of  years  of  labor  and  comparison  ; 
and  the  ingenuous  critic,  in  view  of  the  mechanical  difficulties  of  its 
execution,  together  with  those  of  condensing  so  many  different  sub- 
jects into  limited  spaces,  may  peradventure  look  upon  it  favorably, 
under  these  circumstances. 

We  resume.  It  seems  reconcilable  with  the  theory, —  now  univer- 
sally accepted  by  naturalists  as  demonstrated  through  botany,  herpe- 
tology,  entomology,  zoology,  &c,  of  the  original  distribution  of 
animate  creatures  in  centres,  zones,  or  provinces  of  Creation — that 
each  one  of  the  various  primitive  forms  of  human  speech  arose  within 
that  geographical  centre  where  the  particular  group  of  men  inheriting 
its  time-developed,  or  now-corrupted  dialects,  was  created.  One  can 
furthermore  perceive  that  the  law  of  gradation — in  physical  characteris- 
tics from  one  group  of  mankind  to  another,  when  restored  to  their  ear- 
liest historical  sites — to  some  extent  holds  good  upon  surveying  their 
languages:  that  is  to  say,  abstraction  made  of  known  migrations  and 
intermixtures  among  races,  each  grand  type  of  humanity  with  its 
typical  idioms  of  speech,  can  be  carried  back,  more  or  less  approxi- 
mately, to  the  cradle  of  its  traditionary  origin.  Thus,  for  instance, 
when,  in  America,  we  behold  an  Israelite,  it  requires  no  effort  of 
imagination  to  trace  his  ethnic  pedigree  backwards  across  the  At- 
lantic to  Europe,  and  thence  to  Palestine ;  whence  history,  combined 
with  the  analogies  of  his  race-character,  and  formerly  special  tongue, 
accompanies  him  to  Arpha-kasd,  Chaldfean  Orfa,490  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  which  lay  the  birth-place  of  the  Abrahamidse.  Beyond  that 
ultimatum,  positive  science  hazards  no  opinion.  The  theologer  alone 
knows  how  or  why  Abraham's  ancestry  got  among  those  hills  instead 
of  beginning  amid  the  Himalayan,  Cordilleran,  Pyrenean,  or  other 
mountain  ranges. 

In  this  connection,  however  differing  from  many  uncritical  sur- 
mises of  their  learned  author,  I  must  do  Chesney  the  justice  to  say, 
that  his  inquiries  into  the  geographical  site  of  the  fabled  "  garden  of 
delight," — Eden  of  the  Chaldees,  Hadenlche  of  Zoroaster,  and  Paradise 
of  the  Persians — have  cleared  up,  beyond  any  other  writer,  the  diffi- 
culties of  identifying  what,  in  king  James's  version,491  is  a  river 
which,  after  "  it  was  parted,  (and)  became  into  four  heads." 

The  eminent  chief  of  the  "Euphrates  Expedition"  possessed,  more 
than  any  preceding  traveller  over  the  same  localities,  the  scientific 
requirements  for  their  study ;  and  his  careful  observations  have  re- 
stored to  rational  geography, —  not  indeed   a  mythos,  which  even 

490  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  636-7;  and  "  Genealogical  Tableau  of  Xth  Genesis." 
<91  Genesis,  II,  10;  —  compare  Renan,  Op.  tit.,  pp.  449-56. 


THE    POLYGENISTS.  573 

Origen492  considered  it  "idiotic"  to  take  in  other  than  an  allegorical 
sense,  but  a  tract  of  country  satisfying  all  the  topographical  exigenda 
of  the  brief  poetic  legend.  "  At  the  head  of  the  fertile  valleys  of  the 
Halys,  Aras,  Tigris,  and  Euphrates,"  as  Chesney  demonstrates  through 
a  beautiful  map,493  "  we  find,  as  might  be  expected,  the  highest  moun- 
tains which  were  known  for  a  great  many  centuries  after  the  Flood ; 
and  in  this  lofty  region  are  the  sources  of  the  four  great  streams 
above  mentioned,  which  flow  through  Eden  in  directions  tending 
towards  the  four  cardinal  points."  Hence  all  mystery  vanishes 
through  the  identification  of  a  lovely  province  in  Armenia,  whence 
the  adjacent  sources  of  four  rivers  stream  forth  —  viz.:  the  Halys 
(Phison)  northwards  to  the  Black  Sea ;  the  Araxes  (Gihon)  eastwards 
to  the  Caspian ;  the  Tigris  (Hiddehel,  as  our  translators  foolishly  spell 
Ha-DiKLe,  the-Digle  ;  ed-Didjle,  of  the  present  Mesopotamiaus)  flow- 
ing southwards,  and  the  Euphrates  (Phrat)  westwards,  until,  bending 
towards  each  other,  these  two  rivers  unite  and  fall  into  the  Persian 
Gulf  through  the  Shut-el-arab. 

Being  almost  the  only  people  whose  geographical  origin  can  now 
be  determined  within  a  few  leagues  of  space,  it  may  be  well  to 
strengthen  this  assertion  from  other  quarters;  after  remarking  that  the 
starting-place  of  the  Abrahamidse  (or  high-landers),  before  they  became 
Hebrews  ( Yonderers,  subsequently  to  journeying  westward  beyond  the 
Euphrates),  falls  naturally  within  the  zoological  province  allotted  by 
Agassiz494  to  the  Syro-Iranian  fauna  of  the  European  realm. 

Mackay 495  has  thrown  together  some  of  the  best  German  authorities 
on  the  "mythical  geography  of  Paradise,"  which  substantiate  these 
and  my  former  remarks  on  Arpha-kasd. 

"Among  the  places  locally  distinguished  by  the  name  of  Eden 
was  a  hill  district  of  northern  Assyria  or  Media,  called  Eden  in 
Thelasar  (2  Kings  xix,  12;  JEzek.  xxvii,  23 — Gesen.  Lex.  p.  60, 
1117 ;  Winer,  B.  W.  B.,  I,  380 ;  H,  704).  This  Thelasar  or  Ellasar 
(Gen.  xiv)  is  conterminous  with  Ptolemy's  'Arrapachitis  (meaning 
either  'Chaklfean  fortress,'  Ewald,  Geschiehte,  I,  333 ;  or,  'Aryapaks- 
chata,'  bordering  upon  Arya  or  Iran,  Von  Bohlen,  Genesis,  137),  and 
with  the  plain  of  the  ancient  city  Rages  or  Ragau  (Judith,  I,  6,  15), 
where  the  Assyrian  monarch  overcame  the  Median  king  Arphaxad. 
Rai,  in  several  Asiatic  tongues,  was  a  name  for  Paradise  (Von  Bohlen, 

492  Peri-Archon,  lib.  IV,  c.  2 ;   Huet,  Origeniana,  p.  167. 

493  The  Expedition  for  the  survey  of  the  Rivers  Euphrates  and  Tigris  (1835-7) ;  London,  1850, 
I,  pp.  266-80 :  II,  1-60 ;  and  "  Map  of  the  countries  situate  between  the  rivers  Nile  and 
fndus." 

49i  "Provinces  of  the  Animal  World"  —  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  Ixvii-iii,  Ixxviii,  and  map; 
also,  pp.  112-15,  116-17. 

»s  Progress  of  the  Intellect,  London,  8vo,  1850;  1,  pp.  39-44. 


574  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

Genesis,  27),  and  both  Eai  and  Arphaxad,  or  ArrapacMtis,  occur  in 
the  personal  genealogy  of  Heber  (Reu  is  Ragan  in  the  Septuagint). 
It  has  been  ingeniously  surmised  tbat  the  genealogy  from  Shem  to 
Abrabam  is  in  part  significant  of  geographical  localities,  or  successive 
stations  occupied  by  the  Hebrews  in  the  progress  of  migration  from 
Borne  point  in  the  north-east  of  Asia,  from  which  tradition  extended 
in  a  divergent  circle  as  from  the  mythical  Eerieya  of  the  Zend-avesta 
(Ewald,  Geschichte  Israel,  316,  333,  336).  In  Hebrew  tradition,  as  in 
that  of  the  Indians  and  Persians,  this  region  was  immemorially 
sacred."  ~No  scholar  at  all  acquainted  with  the  biblical  exegesis 
pretends  any  longer  to  recognize,  in  the  misspelled  name  Arphaxad 
(copied  by  the  English  translators  from  the  Greek  version^,  an  indi- 
vidual personage,  but  merely  a  geographical  name  ARP7ja-KaSD. 
Tbus  Bunsen:496  "Arpakhskad  (the  men  of  Arrapakhitis),  after  having 
gone  in  the  person  of  Eber  into  Mesopotamia,  pass  in  the  person  of 
Abraham  into  Palestine  (Canaan).  *  *  *  ISTow,  as  to  Arpakshad  or 
Arrapakhitis,  we  know  from  Ptolemy  that  their  country  was  situated 
between  Armenia  and  Assyria,  on  the  southern  slopes  of  the  Gordy- 
sean  mountains,  overhanging  Assyria.  This,  therefore,  we  may  con- 
sider as  one  starting-point.  *  *  *  Why  should  such  a  geographical 
origin  not  be  expressed  geographically,  and  why  should  it  be  mis- 
interpreted ?" 

But,  although  it  may  be  still  impossible  to  fix  the  earliest  cradles 
of  other  races  with  the  same  precision,  and  within  an  equally-small 
area,  as  the  Jewish,  history  enables  us  to  eliminate  a  great  many 
others  from  consideration  when  we  treat  of  the  zoological  province 
they  have  latterly  occupied  as  aliens  through  transplantation.  Thus, 
for  example,  every  German  in  America  is  immediately  restored  to 
northern  Europe  ;  every  negro  to  Africa ;  and  if  a  Chinese,  a  Malay, 
or  other  type  of  man,  be  encountered  anywhere  outside  of  the  geo- 
graphical boundary  of  his  race,  he  is  instantly  placed  back  in  it  by 
educated  reason.  Hence,  through  this  natural,  almost  instinctive 
process,  in  which  history,  philology  and  physiology,  must  co-operate, 
each  type  of  mankind  can  be  restored  to  its  original  centre,  if  not 
perhaps  strictly  of  creation,  at  least  to  that  of  its  earliest  historical 
occupancy ;  beyond  which  point  human  knowledge  stands  at  fault : 
but  none  of  these  sciences,  by  any  possibility,  carries  back  a  negro 
to  the  Caucasus,  traces  a  Kelt  to  the  Andes,  refers  a  Jew  to  the  Altai, 
transfers  a  Pawnee  to  the  Alps,  a  Yukagir  to  the  mountains  of  the 
Moon,  or  an  Australian  to  Mount  Ararat,  as  the  respective  birth- 

496  Christianity  and  Mankind,  their  beginning  and  prospects,  London,  8vo,  1854:  III,  p.  179, 
180,  191.     Cf.  also  Gesenii  Thesaurus,  Lipsise,  18^9;  I,  p.  153;  voce  tpx- 


THE    POLTGENISTS.  575 

places  of  these  persons.  Thauraaturgy  alone  claims  to  perform  such 
miracles ;  ethnology  ignores  them  altogether. 

"When  each  type  of  man  is  thus  replaced  in  the  natural  province 
of  his  origin,  we  can,  by  taking  a  map  of  the  earth,  indicate  in  colors 
several  centres,  within  and  around  each  of  which  the  group  of 
humanity  traced  to  it  seems — the  theological  point  of  view  being,  in 
this  discussion,  left  aside  as  obsolete — aboriginally  to  have  clustered. 
Their  number  I  do  not  pretend  to  guess  at ;  there  may  be  3,  5,  7,  or 
8,  though  less,  I  think,  than  a  dozen  primitive  centres ;  but,  under 
such  aspects,  which  limited  space  now  precludes  my  justifying  by 
argument  or  examples,  it  will  probably  be  found  (by  those  who  for 
their  own  instruction  may  choose  to  test  the  problem  as  patiently  as 
curiosity  has  led  me  to  do  for  mine),  that  history,  comparative  physi- 
ology and  philology,  will  harmonize  completely  with  the  zoological 
theory  of  several  centres,  and  prove  Prof.  Agassiz's  view  to  be  irre- 
fragable, viz :  that  mankind  and  certain  mammalia  were  originally 
subject  to  the  same  laws  of  distribution. 

To  apply  this  doctrine  to  languages :  A  given  number  of  such 
natural  provinces  being  experimentally  determined  through  induc- 
tion, and  then  marked  off  by  colored  spots,  each  representing  a 
typical  group  of  homogeneous  languages,  upon  a  Mercator's  chart  ;497 
if  each  one  of  these  groups  be  taken  separately  as  a  point  of  departure 
in  the  eccentrical  radiations  of  its  own  master-tongue,  it  will  then  be 
recognized,  with  the  ingenious  traveller  Waldeek,498  that  languages 
may  be  compared  to  circles  ;  the  primitive,  or  aboriginal,  speech  forming 
in  each  the  centre.  The  farther  such  tongue  advances  towards  the 
circumference,  the  more  it  loses  in  originality ;  the  tangent,  that  is  to 
say,  the  point  at  which  it  encounters  another  language  (radiating 
likewise  from  its  own  circle)  is  the  place  where  it  begins  to  undergo 
alterations,  and  commences  the  formation  of  a  mixed  idiom.  By  and 
by,  a  third  language,  also  in  process  of  spiral  giration  outwards  upon 
its  own  axis,  intersects  either  one  of  the  two  preceding  or  the  point 
of  union  betwixt  both.  Under  such  circumstances,  it  will  be  seen  (and 
might  be  represented  on  the  Map  in  shades  of  color)  that  the  "  copia 
verborum"  always,  and  the  grammatical  construction  frequently,  of 

49'  Among  attempts  made  at  an  "Ethnographical  Map  of  the  World,"  according  to  reli- 
gious belief,  occupations,  &c,  I  would  particularly  commend  Ravenstein's  large  sheet 
(Reynolds,  Strand,  London) ;  but  all  these  represent  the  distribution  of  mankind  at  the 
present  day ;  whereas  my  conception  refers  to  that  of  different  human  types  at  the  earliest 
historical  point  of  view  (parallel  with  Egyptian  pyramids  5000  years  ago).  Such  a  map 
has  not  been  published  yet;  owing  chiefly,  I  think,  to  a  prevalent  dogma,  that,  inasmuch  as 
all  humanity  commenced  upon  Mount  Ararat,  any  other  system  would  be  too  profane  for 
remunerative  sales. 

498  Voyage  Pillor.  el  Archeol.  in  Yucatan,  Paris,  folio,  1837 ;  p.  24. 


576  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

three  distinct  languages,  thereby  become  more  or  less  interblended. 
Again,  in  course  of  time,  some  elements  of  a  fourth,  a  fifth,  or  even 
of  more,  languages,  originating  in  other  centres,  may  be  infiltrated 
into,  or  superimposed  upon,  this  tripartite  basis  at  certain  points.  Now, 
to  analyze  the  component  parts  of  this  mass,  and  to  carry  back  each 
organically-diverse  tongue  to  its  pristine  centre,  is  the  true  office  of 
antiquarian  philology  ;  and  herein  consists  the  most  glorious  applica- 
tion of  this  science,  regarded  as  the  handmaiden,  not  the  mistress, 
of  "Ethnology,"  which  term  ought  to  represent  the  judicious  union 
of  all  sciences  bearing  upon  the  study  of  Man. 

By  way  of  exemplifying  that  such  fusions  have  really  taken  place 
among  languages,  I  would  instance  the  Constantinopolitan  Turkish, 
or  present  Osmanlee  dialect-  Originally  Altaic  in  geographical  deri- 
vation, the  Turkish  type,  barred  by  the  Himalayan  range  from  much 
influence  over  Hindostan,  and  (save  in  the  desperate  alternative  of 
flight  or  extermination  undergone  by  what  remains  of  Turkish  among 
the  hybrid  Yakuts)  shrinking  from  that  Siberian  cold  which  consti- 
tutes the  mundane  happiness  of  the  Arctic-men  (Samoyeds,  Tchut- 
chis,  Eskimaux,  &c),  radiated  towards  China  on  the  east  and  Media 
on  the  west.  Driven  away  from  the  flowery  empire  after  prolonged 
onslaughts,  the  Turkish  hordes — bringing  with  them,  as  their  only 
trophies,  a  few  Chinese  words  in  their  vocabulary,  and  some  Chinese 
women  in  their  harems  —  struggled  for  many  ages  in  efforts  to  cross 
the  Arian,  or  Persian,  barrier,  which  arrested  their  march  towards 
Europe.  At  such  epochs  was  it  that,  in  Persic  history,  the  Turks 
were  first  called  Aniranians,  and  latterly  Turanians ;  during  all  these 
periods  of  encampment,  never  failing  to  add  Mongolian,  Seythic,  and 
Arian,  females  to  the  Chinese  that  already  garnished  their  tented 
seraglios.  They  absorbed  abundant  Persian  vocables  into  their 
speech  in  the  interim ;  and,  through  amalgamation  with  higher  types 
(essentially  Caucasian),  their  homely  features  began  to  acquire  Eu- 
ropean proportion.  Finally,  as  Osmanlees,  we  find  them  making 
Istambool  their  terrestrial  paradise  —  the  fairest  of  Arabia's,  Cireas- 
sia's,  and  Hellas's  daughters  becoming  their  "spolia  opima"  for  four 
centuries ;  thereby  polishing  the  Turkish  form  to  such  degree,  that 
even  the  Bostanjees  (gardeners),  and  Cayikjees  (boatmen),  of  modern 
Byzantium  now  frequently  rival  Alcibiades  in  personal  beauty.  By 
way,  however,  of  polygamic  re-vindication,  the  politics  of  1854-6 
guarantee,  at  least  for  the  next  generation,  further  improvements  at 
Galata  and  Scutari ;  only,  this  time,  the  manly  cohorts  of  Britain, 
France,  and  Sardinia,  by  reversing  the  gender,  have  secured  Ottoman 
melioration  through  the  female  line ;  and  sculpture  looks  forward 
hopefully  to  a  liberal  supply  from  Turkey  of  torsi  for  Apollos. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  577 

"Pari  passu  "  with  Turkish  improvements  in  the  physique,  owing 
to  amalgamation  with  higher  races,  has  run  the  history  of  their  lan- 
guage. Of  yore  in  Asia  as  barbarous  and  limited  in  vocabulary  as 
an  Eskimo's,  the  Osmanlee  speech  has  become  in  euphony  most 
beautiful ;  and  through  its  inherent  capacity  of  expansion,  aided  by 
absorption  of  foreign  roots,  unbounded;  because  upon  a  given  mono- 
syllable, stolen  no  matter  whence,  the  Turkish  verb  can  agglutinate 
just  what  sense  it  pleases.  Thus,  supposing  that  recent  contact  with 
English  hospitals  should  have  impressed  upon  the  Ottoman  ear  the 
syllable  "sick,"  as  relic  of  the  valetudinarian's  phrase  "I  am  sick," 
the  Turk  can  immediately,  through  the  form  sick-mek,  by  adding  ish, 
obtain  a  reciprocal  verb  sick-ish-mek,  "to  be  sick  with  one  another;" 
or  extend  it  even  to  siek-ish-dir-il-mek,  "  to  be  brought  to  be  sick 
with  one  another;"  and  so  oil  through  thirty-six  forms  of  conjuga- 
tion;499 in  which  the  alien  monosyllable  "sick"  will  henceforward 
continue  to  play  as  great  a  part,  while  Turks  endure,  as  if  it  had 
been  native  Turanian. 

The  Ottomans,  therefore,  exhibit  in  their  present  speech  all  the 
historical  radiations  from  their  Altaic  centre.  At  first  exclusively 
Turanian,  their  language  contracted  some  Sinie  peculiarities ;  and 
then  so  many  Arian  (Persian)  vocables  and  inflexions, — followed, 
after  their  conversion  to  Islamism,  by  such  an  abundance  of  Semitic 
(Arabic)  roots — that  the  more  a  polite  speaker  introduces  Persian  and 
Arabic  into  his  discourse,  the  higher  is  an  Osmanlee  diplomatist's 
estimation  of  such  person's  culture.500  The  modern  Persian  language 
presents  a  similar  superposition  of  Turanian  and  Semitic  forms  upon 
an  Arian  tongue. 

This  principle  of  primitive  centres  of  speech  has  been  victoriously 
proved  for  Semitic  languages  by  Eenan,  and  for  Malayan  by  Craw- 
furd ;  and  it  is  even  exemplified  in  our  bastard  English  tongue, 
although  its  chief  absorptions  are  Indo-Germanic,  except  in  foreign 
substantives  imported  by  commercial  intercourse  from  other  centres 
all  over  the  world;  as  may  be  seen  in  De  Vere's501  capital  book. 
Another  method,  not  altogether  new  and  somewhat  defective  in 
technical  illustration,  has  just  been  proposed  by  Dr.  David  F.  Wein- 
land  (before  the  American  Association  for  the  advancement  of  Sci- 

499  Max  Mullek,  op.  cit..  pp.  111-4;  and  Holdermann's  Grammaire  Turque,  Constanti- 
nople, 1730,  pp.  25-8. 

500  Recollection  of  Baron  de  Tott's  work,  read  when  I  began  a  slight  study  of  Turkish  at 
Cairo,  1832-4,  suBf;ests  reference  to  some  very  happy  illustrations  of  this  mixture  of  three 
tongues  given  by  Vim ;  but  I  no  longer  possess,  nor  know  where  to  find,  his  book  for 
citation. 

501  Outlines  of  Compar  Hive  Philology,  New  York,  1853. 

37 


578  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

ence,502  "  on  the  names  of  Animals  with  reference  to  Ethnology"),  for 
tracking  back  the  name  of  a  given  animal  to  its  primitive  zoological 
province,  and  hence  deducing  the  nation  that  first  occupied  such 
centre.  There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  of  its  logical  correctness,  and 
I  lament  that  space  is  now  lacking  to  corroborate  it  by  other  exam- 
ples ;  but  my  brief  philological  digression,  save  on  one  point,  must 
be  closed ;  and  with  the  less  regret  because  our  able  collaborator,  M. 
Alfred  Maury,  has  covered  the  philological  ground  of  ethnology  in 
Chapter  I.  of  this  volume. 

The  facts  most  obnoxious  to  the  modern  evangelical  hypothesis  of 
the  unity  of  all  languages,  and  which  philological  monogenism,  with 
conspiring  unanimity,  either  slurs  over,  or  suppresses,  lie  in  those 
numerous  cases  where  the  type  of  man,  now  found  speaking  a  given 
language,  bears  no  relation  physically,  or  through  its  geographical 
origin,  to  the  speech  which,  derived  from  a  totally-distinct  centre,  it 
employed  as  its  vernacular.  Thus,  as  a  ready  instance,  negroes 
transported  to  America  from  Africa  (their  own  African  idioms  being 
wholly  lost  within  two  generations)  have  spoken  Dutch  in  New 
York  State,  German  in  Pennsylvania,  Swedish  in  Delaware,  Euglish 
from  Maine  to  Louisiana;  where,  in  a  single  city,  New  Orleans, 
they  still  converse  in  French,  Spanish,  or  English,  according  to  the 
domestic  language  of  their  proprietors.  Continuing  through  the 
Antilles,  among  which,  on  different  islands,  French,  Danish,  Span- 
ish, English  dialects,  and  even  Irish  with  the  brogue,^3  are  tortured 
by  negro  voices  in  the  absence  of  any  colloquial  African  tongue,  we 
find  them  speaking  Caribsean  dialects  along  the  Mosquito  shores, 
Portuguese  in  Brazilian  cities,  and  the  lingoa  geral,m  or  current 
Indian  idioms  of  the  country,  throughout  South  America.  In 
parallel  manner,  all  along  Barbary,  Egypt,  and  Syria,  imported 
negroes  talk  only  in  Arabic;  while  in  Asia  Minor,  and  in  the  Morea, 
I  have  met  with  many  wholly  ignorant  of  any  language  but  Turkish 
in  the  former  case,  and  Greek  in  the  latter.  Here,  then,  are  familiar 
instances  where  human  faunas  of  the  African  realm  would,  by  the 
mere  philologer  reasoning  upon  a  few  vocabularies,  be  assigned  to 
the  Indogermanic,  the  Semitic,  or  the  Turanian  groups  of  known 
Asiatic  origin!     Against  such  "petitiones  principii,"  Desmoulins 

502  Reported  in  New  York  Herald,  Aug.  26th,  1856;  and  perhaps  as  regards  foreign  pro- 
per names  incorrectly. 

503  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  723. 

604  Aug.  de  St.  Hilaire,  Voyages  dans  les  provinces  de  Rio  de  Janeiro  el  de  Minas  Geraes, 
Paris,  8vo,  1830;  I,  pp.  424-6;  II,  49-57: — Rdoendas,  Voy.  Pittor.  dans  le  Bresil,  Paris, 
1833  ;  II,  pp.  3,  27-34. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  -579 

was  the  first  to  raise  his  voice;505  followed  by  Morton,506  D'Avezac,607 
Pickering,508  and  others ;  but  inasmuch  as  some  ethnographers  do 
not  appear  to  have  laid  sufficient  stress  on  the  multitude  of  these 
contradictions  inherent  in  the  mere  philological  school,  I  will  enu- 
merate a  few  of  the  more  striking  instances,  beginning  with  the 
oldest  historical  nation,  that  of  Egypt. 

The  Fellah  of  the  present  day  has  recovered  the  type  of  his 
primitive  ancestry  {vide  supra,  pi.  I  and  II,  and  p.  109) ;  yet  his 
language  has  become  Arabic  instead  of  the  ancient  Hamitic,  which, 
in  the  ratio  of  its  antiquity,  frees  itself  from  Shemite  influence.509 
The  Jews,  spread  over  the  world,  their  primitive  Aramasen  tongue 
and  its  successor  the  Hebrew  being  colloquially  forgotten,  adopt  as 
their  own  the  language  of  every  race  among  whom  they  happen  to 
sojourn ;  yet,  owing  to  intermarriage  exclusively  among  their  own 
race,  their  true  type  has  been  preserved  independently  of  such 
transplantations — I  allude  to  that  of  more  or  less  sallow  complexion, 
black  hair  and  eyes,  aquiline  nose,  and  high  but  receding  forehead. 
Nevertheless,  it  would  be  an  illusion  to  suppose  that,  even  since  the 
cessation  of  intermixture  with  Canaanites,  Persians,  and  Greeks, 
down  to  their  expulsion  from  Palestine  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem, 
the  Israelites  have  been  able  to  avoid  mingling  their  blood  with  that 
of  other  races,  to  the  extent  which  rabbinical  superstition  may  claim 
or  that  Christians  habitually  concede.  This  is  accounted  for  in  the 
vicissitudes  of  their  history  during  our  middle  ages ;  and  is  mainly 
owing  to  the  proselyting  furor  of  the  Inquisition.  On  the  one 
hand,  forced  conversions,  in  Spain  and  Portugal  especially,  often 
compelled  Hebrews  to  dissimulate  their  repugnance  to  Gentile 
unions,  as  well  as  to  disguise  their  secret  adherence  to  Judaism ; 
and  this,  sometimes,  with  such  consummate  skill  that,  in  1665,  the 
Christian  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  was  discovered  to  have  been  a  Jew 
all  his  life  ! 510  On  the  other,  polygamy  was  ever  free  to  the  Israel- 
ite,511 until  abandoned  throughout  Europe  in  submission  to  Catholic 
laws.  The  historical  instances  are  so  numerous  of  modern  Jewish 
alliances  with  Gentiles,  that  it  would  require  many  pages  to  illus- 

505  Races  Humaines,  pp.  366-50. 

M6"Inedited  MSS.,"  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  311,  322-3: — Ghddon,  Olia  JEgyptiaca, 
pp.  78-9. 

s°»  Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  de  Oeographie,  XIV,  1840;  p.  228. 

«e  Races,  pp.  277-8. 

H»  Birch,  Crystal  Palace  Hand-book,  1856;  pp.  249-52. 

5W  Basnaoe,  Hisl.  and  Relig.  of  the  Jews,  fol.  London,  1708 ;  p.  705.  To  Basnage,  who 
may  justly  be  termed  the  continuer  of  Josephus,  I  must  refer  the  reader  for  proofs  of  all 
my  assertions. 

mi  Op.  cil.,  pp.  469-70. 


580  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

trate  them  fully ;  but  their  result  is,  that  the  votaries  of  Judaism 
may  be  divided  into  two  broadly-marked  and  distinct  types,  viz : 
the  one  above  mentioned,  and  another  distinguished  by  lank  and 
tall  frame,  «lear  blue  eye,  very  white  and  freckled  skin,  and  yellow- 
reddish  hair. 

Not  merely  in  Barbary,  Arabia,  Bokhara,  Hindostan  and  China, 
have  numberless  converts  to  Judaism  mingled  their  blood  with  the 
pure  Abrahamic  stock ;  but,  at  several  periods  of  temporary  pros- 
perity, and  in  various  parts  of  Europe  also,  during  the  middle  ages, 
Indo-germanic  and  Sclavonian  families,  adopting  Mosaic  institutes, 
freely  intermixed  with  Israelites ;  and  hence,  through  amalgamation, 
arise  all  noticeable  divergencies  from  the  well-known  standard  type. 
Poland  seems  to  be  the  focus  of  this  fusion  of  Jews  with  the  German 
and  Sarmatian  races ; 512  but  some  descendants  of  these  multifarious 
unions,  exiled  from  Spain,  form  at  this  day  large  classes  in  Algeria ; 
and,  whilst  they  are  rare  in  Egypt  and  Syria,  I  can  attest  their  fre- 
quency at  Rhodes,  Smyrna,  and  Constantinople.  But,  as  a  special 
instance  of  the  false  deductions  that  would  be  drawn  from  them 
(were  philology  not  to  be  controlled  by  physiological  criteria  combined 
with  history),  while  at  Rhodes  and  Smyrna  the  outdoor  language  of 
these  Israelites  is  Greek,  and  at  Constantinople  Turkish, —  their 
domestic  speech  is  Spanish,  and  their  literature  in  the  same  tongue 
printed  with  Hebrew  letters !  The  rationale  is,  they  descend  from 
the  Jews  driven  out  of  Spain  during  the  XVIth  century,  where  they 
must  have  absorbed  a  goodly  poi'tion  of  Gothic,  or  perhaps  Vandal, 
blood  prior  to  their  exode.  Indeed,  upon  surveying  the  infinitude 
of  diverse  languages,  habits,  dresses,  and  contradictory  institutions, 
contracted  by  the  Jewish  type  in  every  country  of  the  earth,  and  the 
consequent  clashings  of  each  national  synagogue  upon  points  of  reli- 
gious doctrine  among  Khahhamim  educated  in  different  countries, 
should  wealth  ever  enable  Europeanized  Jews  to  re-purchase  Jerusa- 
lem, and  to  collect  their  brethren  there  from  all  regions  of  the  earth, 
I  much  fear  the  result  would  be  but  a  repetition  of  the  "  confusion 
"of  Babel."  Apart  from  identity  of  physical  conformation,  subject  to 
the  exceptions  above  noticed,  there  could  be  but  one  test  (and  that 
latterly  made  doubtful)513  through  which  such  incongruous  elements 
could  fraternize;  and  like  a  Council  at  Ephesus,  this  Sanhedrim 

612  Bokt  de  St.  Vincent,  Anthropologic  de  VAfrique  Fran$aise,  1845,  pp.  12,  15,  17-8: — 
Rozet,  Voyage  dans  la  Regence  d' Alger,  Paris  4to,  1833;  II,  pp.  210-35.  The  learned  author 
of  Genesis  of  the  Earth  and  of  Man  (1856,  pp.  69,  123)  supposes  that  the  frequency  of  these 
fair-skinned  yellow-haired  Jews  in  the  East  "  has  not  been  mentioned  by  any  writer."  Here 
are  two  witnesses  in  the  meanwhile. 

513  Beetherand  (Medecine  el  Hygiene  des  Arabes,  Paris,  1855;  p.  313,  note),  on  changes 
in  Circumcision. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  581 

would  soon  dissolve   in   uproar,  affording  to  Gentiles  a  spectacle 
similar  to,  and  edifying  as,  that  of  the  Conventicle  of  Dordrecht : 

"  Dordrachi  Synodus  nodus. 
Chorus  integer  seger. 
Conventus  ventus, 
Sessio  stramen,  Amen." 

Very  singular  is  it,  nevertheless,  that  the  people  whose  xenolasia, 
or  hatred  to  foreigners,  has  been  so  instinctive  since  their  post-Baby- 
lonian history,  should  have  become  in  language  the  most  cosmopo- 
litan. Thus  Josephus  says,  that  they  who  learned  many  tongues 
were  not  esteemed  in  Judea ;  and  Origen  testifies  that,  in  his  time, 
the  Jews  did  not  trouble  themselves  about  Grecians  or  their  tenets. 
In  the  Mishna,  Jewish  children  are  forbidden  to  acquire  Greek.614 
"  The  postille,  annexed  to  the  text  of  the  Misnah,  contains  a  maledic- 
tion, pronounced  against  him  who  keeps  a  hog,  or  teaches  his  son 
G-reeh;  as  if  it  was  equally  impure  to  feed  an  unclean  beast,  and  to 
give  men  a  good  education :"  but  exile  forced  the  Rabbis  to  relax 
such  inhibitions,  during  the  11th  century,  after  R.  Solomon  of  Bar- 
celona; and  now  it  would  be  difficult  to  define  Israelitish  character- 
istics more  aptly  than  by  "  Judaismus  polyglottus,"  did  not  the  ori- 
ginal Abrahamic  type, — owing  to  a  recognized  law  in  breeding,  that 
the  many,  effacing  by  degrees  the  few,  invariably  return  to  their 
normal  physique — vindicate  its  right  to  be  called  the  purest,  cceteris 
paribus,  of  all  nations  upon  earth. 

Again,  among  Shemitish  examples,  there  are  multitudes  of  pure- 
blooded  Arabs  in  Affghanistan  and  Bokhara,  few  of  whom  except 
their  Moolahs  preserve  their  Arabian  dialect ;  ™  but  have  adopted 
the  alien  idioms  of  the  country,  whilst  preserving  their  Arabic  phy- 
sique during  about  1000  years.  In  Asia,  these  metamorphoses  of 
tongue  coupled  with  preservation  of  type  are  innumerable.  There 
are  white  Kalmuks  (Telenggout)  in  Siberia,  whose  physiognomy  is 
wholly  Mongol :  but  speaking  Turkish,  they  are  evidently  a  Mongo- 
lian family  which,  losing  its  own  tongue,  has  adopted  a  Turkish  dia- 
lect.516   If  one  were  to  attempt  a  specification  of  the  hybrid  grada- 

611  Basnage,  pp.  405,  608-9.  A  very  singular  question,  bearing  upon  cranioscopy,  is 
asked  in  the  old  Talmud  (Sckabbas),  viz.:  "Quare  sunt  capita  Babyloniorum  rotunda 
[MeGeLGiLOTV]  ?" — Joh.  Buxtorfi  p.,  Lexicon  Chaldaicum  Talm.  H  Rabbin.,  1629,  p.  1435. 
The  fact,  is  (supra,  Chap.  II,  figs.  39,  40),  they  are  round. 

615  Khanikoff,  Bokhara,  its  Amir  and  People,  transl.  De  Bode,  London,  8vo.,  1845;  pp. 
67-80:  —  Malcolm,  History  of  Persia,  London,  4to.,  1815;  p.  277: — Morier,  Second  Jour- 
ney through  Persia,  London,  4to.,  1818;  i.  pp.  47-8.  On  the  absurdity  of  Jews  being  the 
ancestors  of  the  Tadjiks  of  Bokhara,  or  the  Pushtaneh  of  Cabul,  read  Kennedy,  Question 
of  the  supposed  Lost  Tribes  of  Israel,  London,  8vo,  1855,  p.  51. 

516  Klaproth,  Magazin  Asiatique,  No.  I. : — See  all  kinds  of  similar  transpositions  between 
race  and  tongue  in  Desmoulins,  passim. 


582  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

tions  in  blood  and  languages  that  exist  around  the  circumferences 
of  Arctic,  Ouralian,  Altaic,  Thibetan,  Daourian,  and  other  stocks, 
wherein  one  race  has  exchanged  its  language,  whilst  more  or  less 
perpetuating  its  own  race-character,  a  volume  of  citations  would 
barely  cover  the  contradictory  instances ;  but  the  exactitude  of  a 
competent  authority's,517  Count  John  Potocki's,  experience  would  be 
thoroughly  confirmed:  —  "but  I  also  encounter  [at  Astrakan]  new 
difficulties.  I  behold  men  with  flat  faces,  who  seem  to  belong  to 
the  same  people;  but  these  men  speak  different  languages.  On  the 
other  hand,  men  with  dissimilar  features  express  themselves  in  the 
same  idiom ;  and  all  pretend  to  be  the  veritable  Tatars  of  Tchinghiz- 
khan !"  The  same  phenomena,  upon  contrasting  ancient  and 
modern  times  especially,  meet  the  eye  everywhere  in  Europe.  "For 
example,"  says  Potocki,518  whilst  laying  down  an  admirable  series  of 
rules  for  unravelling  these  complex  meshes  wherein  the  tongue  con- 
tradicts the  race,  or  vice  versa,  "the  Tatars  of  Lithuania  have  pre- 
served their  little  eyes  and  their  religion ;  but  they  have  lost  their 
language,  and  no  longer  speak  anything  but  Polish :  at  the  same 
time  that  Latham,519  in  whose  excellent  compilation  other  instances 
occur,  establishes  that — "a.  There  is  a  considerable  amount  of 
Dgrian  blood  amongst  certain  populations  whose  speech  is  Sclavonic. 
b.  There  is  a  considerable  amount  of  Sclavonic  blood  among  certain 
populations  whose  speech  is  German."  Haartman520  has  shown  that 
the  Carelians,  hitherto  classed  as  Finns,  belonged  to  a  totally  dis- 
tinct family,  whose  lost  language  "  has  been  superseded  by  the  Fin- 
nic:" ISTiebuhr521  proves  that  the  Epirots  "changed  their  language, 
without  conquest  or  colonization,  into  Greek:"  Maury  indicates  the 
diversities  of  races  and  tongues  now  becoming  absorbed  into  French, 
whilst  still  preserving  distinctive  marks  of  separate  race-charac- 
ters:522 Keith  Johnston's  exquisite  "Ethnographic  Map  of  Great  Bri- 
tain and  Ireland,"  with  its  letter-press,523  exhibits  how  pre-Xeltic, 
Celtic,  and  Teutonic  differences  of  blood  and  languages  are  gradu- 
ally merging  themselves  into  a  common  vernacular,  the  English; 
although  the  original  distinctions  of  race  still  survive  countless  inter- 

617  Voyage  dans  les  Steps  de  I'Astraian  et  du  Caucase.  Eistoire  Primitif  des  Peuples  qui  ont 
habile  anciennement  ces  Contre'es:  Nouveau  Periple  du  Pont  Euxin  —  with  notes  by  Klaproth ; 
Paris,  8vo.,  1829;  ii.  p.  52: — See  Reckbekg  (Les  Peuples  de  la  Russie,  Paris,  fol. ;  Discoura 
preliminaire,  pp.  3,  6-13)  for  the  various  families  occupying  the  Russian  Empire  =  ninety- 
nine  nations. 

sis  Op.  til.,  i.  p.  12. 

519  Native  Races  of  the  Russian  Empire,  London,  I2mo.,  1854;  p.  23. 

5M>  Transactions  of  the  R.  Soc.  of  Stockholm,  1847.        1 

5=1  History  of  Rome,  i.  p.  37.  j         "  Morton  s  medited  MSS-" 

622  Ethnologic  Ancie'nne  de  la  France,  Paris,  18mo.,  1853,  pp.  22-32. 

523  Physical  Atlas,  fol.  1855,  PI.  33. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  583 

marriages :  and  Pickering,524  struck  with  linguistic  anomalies  beheld 
in  the  eleven  races  discerned  by  him  in  his  voyage  round  the  world, 
at  tbe  same  time  that  he  furnishes  other  illustrations,  judiciously  ob- 
serves—  "Although  languages  indicate  national  affiliation,  their 
actual  distribution  is,  to  a  certain  extent,  independent  of  physical 
race.  Confusion  has  sometimes  arisen,  from  not  giving  due  atten- 
tion to  this  circumstance ;  and  indeed,  the  extension,  or  the  impart- 
ing of  languages,  is  a  subject  which  has  received  very  little  attention. 
Writers  sometimes  reason  as  if  nations  went  about  in  masses,  the 
strong  overcoming  the  weak,  and  imposing  at  once  their  customs, 
religion,  and  languages  on  the  vanquished;"  when  the  contrary  has 
been  more  frequently  exemplified :  and  he  shows  that  in  the  cases  of 
Africans  transplanted  involuntarily  to  the  United  States,  Hayti,  and 
St.  Vincent,  "  we  have  three  examples,  where  one  physical  race  of 
men  has  succeeded  to  the  languages  and  institutions  of  another." 

In  general,  the  fusion  between  languages  originating  from  different 
centres,  is  parallel  with  amalgamations  between  races  of  distinct 
stocks  brought  together  from  widely  separated  countries.  Among 
familiar  examples,  wherein  English  thus  struggles  for  mastery  (apart 
from  Malta  against  Italian- Arabic,  and  in  the  Ionian  Islands  against 
Venitianized  Greek),  may  be  mentioned  Pitcairn's  Islanders  (by 
this  time  probably  moved  on  to  Van  Diemen's  Land),  whither  the 
"Bounty's"  mutineers,  carrying  off  Polynesian  females,  formed  a 
race  of  half-castes :  the  small,  if  prolific,  family  at  Tristan  d'Acunha, 
compounded  between  nigritian  women  from  St.  Helena  and  British 
marines; — and  the  amalgamizing  tendency  of  colonists  at  New 
Zealand,525  which  introduces  a  third  element  of  hybridity  amid  a 
people  that,  at  the  time  of  their  earliest  relations  with  Europeans, 
were  already  (strange  to  say)  composed  of  two  different  stocks ;  the 
one  fair,  and  unquestionably  Polynesian ;  the  other  black,  either 
Harfoorian  or  Papuan  ;  whose  union  had  produced  various  shades  of 
mulattoes,  —  to  the  astonishment  of  Crozet,526  when  he  saw  "trois 
especes  d'hommes,  des  blancs,  des  noirs,  et  des  basanes  ou  jaunes," 
at  Cook's  Port  of  Islands.  Some  day,  perhaps,  a  philologer,  who 
disregards  history  and  race-character,  will  establish  perfect  unity 
among  Pitcairn,  Tristan  d'Acunha,  and  New  Zealand,  humanity,  on 
the  ground  of  their  natives  speaking  English  ! 

Thus,  one  might  travel  onward,  by  the  aid  of  literary  sources,  from 

»M  United  Slates  Explor.  Exped.,  1848,  fol.,  IX,  pp.  277-9. 

625  Angas,  New  Zealand  illustrated,  London,  fol.,  1846. 

5K  Nouvtau  Voyage  a  la  Mer  du  Sud,  with  Capt.  Marion  in  the  "  Mascarin"  and  "  Castries," 
Paris,  8vo,  1783;  pp.  51-2,  137-8: — confirmed  by  Chamisso,  in  Kotzebue's  Voy.  of  Disco- 
very into  the  South  Sea,  &c. ;  tranl.  Lloyd,  London,  8vo,  1821 ;  III,  p.  290.  The  Tonga 
Islanders  afford  a  parallel  illustration. 


584  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

country  to  country,  all  over  the  world  (as  indeed  my  notes  can  show 
that  I  have  done)  to  prove  that  there  is  scarcely  any  spot  remaining 
now  where  amalgamation  between  different  races  has  not  taken 
place ;  and,  consequently,  where  philology,  if  applied  without  know- 
ledge of  these  physical  facts,  must  often  lead  to  egregious  error.  I 
must  content  myself,  however,  with  succinct  references,  under  each 
of  the  54  heads  of  our  "Ethnographic  Tableau,"  to  authorities, 
through  which  an  inquirer  can  satisfy  himself  upon  the  truth  of  this 
assertion.  The  converse  of  our  proposition  will,  moreover,  substan- 
tiate its  correctness,  viz. :  that,  wherever  there  has  been  no  amalga- 
mation of  races,  a  type  will  perpetuate  its  language  and  its  blood, 
irrespectively  of  climatic  influences.  Many  islands  and  peninsulas 
would  furnish  illustrations  in  different  regions  of  the  earth,  but  none 
more  fortified  with  such  historical  guarantees,  and  for  so  long  a  period 
as  thirty  generations,  as  hyperborean  Iceland. 

Sixty-five  years,  that  is  about  a.  d.  795,  before  its  re-discovery  by 
the  Norwegian  Floke  in  861,  Iceland  had  been  occasionally  visited  by 
Irish  anchorites  from  the  Feroe  Isles  ;527  the  latter  being  known  to  the 
learned  monks  of  Ireland  prior  to  725.  Colonization  of  the  former 
island  by  Scandinavians  commenced  as  early  as  862  ;528  and  thither 
flocked  the  Northmen  in  such  numbers  from  Halogaland,  Drontherrn, 
Nordenfield,  Nommedalen,  &c,  together  with  some  cognate  families 
from  Sweden,  Scotland,  the  Hebrides,  and  Ireland,  that,  by  920,  the 
country  was  already  populous ;  and  the  first  historical  census  of  1100 
showed  about  "  3860  principal  heads  of  families."  Unspeakable 
disasters  from  plagues,  volcanoes,  famines,  and  diminutions  of  tem- 
perature, have  been  their  lot;  especially  when  cut  off  from  their  last 
Greenland  offshoots™  by  the  ice,  during  1406-8.  During  nearly 
1000  years  pure-blooded  Northmen  have  withstood,  remote  from  the 
rest  of  the  world,  Iceland's  inhospitable  climate,  and,  free  from 
amalgamation  with  any  other  race,  as  a  consequence,  still  speak 
the  old  Norse  as  purely  as  Ingolfr,  the  first  actual  settler  in  862.6M 
Nevertheless,  imbued,  since  their  forcible  conversion,  981-1000,  with 
biblical  traditions,  even  these  Icelanders  have  hitched  their  genealo- 
gies on  to  the  Semitic  chart  called  Xth  Genesis  !   Jon  Arason,  bishop 

421  Letronne,  Recherches  geographiques  el  critiques  sur  le  Lime  "de  Mensura  orbis  Terrse," 
compose  en  Irelande,  au  commencement  du  9me  siecle  par  Dicuil ;  Paris,  1814;  pp.  131—46. 

658  Xavier  Maemier,  "  Histoire  de  l'Islande,"  Voyage  de  la  Commission  Seienlifique  du  Nord, 
Corvette  "Recherche,"  en  Islande  el  au  Groenland  (1835-6);  Paris,  8vo,  1840;  pp.  12-191. 

529  Scokesbt,  Journal  of  Northern  Whale  Fishery  and  West  Greenland,  Edinburgh,  8vo,  1823 ; 
and  Gaimard,  "  Histoire  du  Voyage  de  la  Recherche,"  Paris,  1838;   I,  p.  3. 

630  Marmier,  "Litterature  Islandaise,"  op.  cit.,  p.  7:- — Bunsen,  Discourse  on  Ethnology 
British  Assoc,  for  the  Adv.  of  Science,  in  "Three  linguistic  Dissertations,"  London,  1848;  pp. 
278-9. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  585 

of  Iceland  towards  the  end  of  the  15th  century,  although  the  son  of 
a  peasant,  "caused  his  genealogy  to  mount  up  in  a  straight  line  to 
the  first  kings  of  Denmark,  and  even  to  Adam.  *  *  *  It  comes 
down  from  Adam  to  Noah,  from  Noah  to  Japhet,  to  Jafre,  Jothum, 
Cyprus,  Crete,  Saturn,  Jupiter,  to  Darius.  At  the  23d  degree,  we 
find  Priam  ;  at  the  25th,  Throar,  whom  we  call  Thor,  says  the  chroni- 
cler ;  at  the  42d,  Voden  or  Odin ;  then  come  the  first  kings  of  Den- 
mark; and,  at  the  85th,  appears  the  name  of  this  bishop!"531  In  such 
a  desolate  country,  amid  wintry  darkness  extending  to  21  hours  per 
diern,  time  must  have  been  wearisome.  Sympathy  bids  us  respect 
the  fables  of  a  school-loving  people,  who,  "  simplex  munditiis," 
composed  the  Edda,  besides  a  multitude  of  Sagas,  —  generally  about 
as  historical  as  good  Bishop  Arason's  pedigree.532 

Icelanders,  however,  may  challenge  the  rest  of  mankind  to  exhibit 
another  nation  upon  which  a  thousand  years  have  entailed  neither 
change  of  race  nor  alteration  of  speech.  Their  high-caste  Scandi- 
navian features,  abundantly  figured  in  portraits  by  Gaimard,5JJ 
equally  attest  the  purity  of  their  blood  and  permanence  of  type, 
despite  their  long  position  on  the  Arctic  circle, — where,  according 
to  alleged  climatic  action  upon  the  human  frame,  and  Bishop  Ara- 
son's genealogical  tables  aforesaid,  they  ought  to  have  beeome  either 
Lapps  or  Eskimo  ! 

Let  it  not  be  said,  in  behalf  of  the  monogenistic  view,  that,  in 
proportion  as  one  recedes  into  antiquity,  fewer  languages  and  fewer 
races  are  encountered.  At  the  age  of  the  writer  of  Xth  Genesis, 
within  the  very  limited  superficies  embraced  within  his  geography,534 
the  79  nations,  tribes,  cities,  and  countries,  enumerated  by  him,  were 
already  divided  "after  their  tongues."  The  existence  of  no  others 
was  known  to  him,  else  more  would  have  been  recorded.  Even  in 
a  fractional  part  of  the  world,  just  at  the  edge  of  the  above  map's 
circumference,  Herodotus  tells  us  that,  in  the  twelve  cities  of  Ionia 
alone,  four  distinct  tongues  were  spoken  ;  and  how  Grecian  traders, 
between  the  Volga  and  the  Uralian  range,  carried  with  them  no 
less  than  seven  interpreters ;  whilst  Polybius  narrates  that  Carthagi- 
nian mercenaries  in  Spain,  during  a  mutiny,  vociferated  their  demands 
in  ten  different  languages.     Yet,  to  all  these  chroniclers,  three  fourths 

531  Marmier,  "Histoire,"  p.  323:  —  Compare  some  of  the  Arab  genealogies  collected  by 
Chesney;— Op.  cit.,  I,  appendices,  Tables  1-4. 

632  Ellesmere,  Guide  to  Northern  Archceology,  by  the  R.  Soc.  of  Northern  Antiquaries  of 
Copenhagen,  London,  8vo,  1848,  pp.  83-91. 

633  Harsher,  Op.  cit.  From  it  I  have  selected  the  simple  fisherman,  Petur  Olafsen ;  No.  14 
of  our  Tableau :  but  the  work  contains  larger  likenesses  of  men  more  illustrious,  perhaps, 
though  not  more  typical. 

5s4  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  549-50,  Ethnol.  Tableau,  and  Map. 


586  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

of  the  earth's  surface  were  utterly  unknown !  A  glance  over  the 
annals,  or  monuments,  of  these  three  fourths,  will  prove  that  the 
major  portion  of  their  human  inhabitants,  like  other  genera  of  their 
mammalia,  must  have  existed  contemporaneously.  Our  last  volume, 
combined  with  the  great  enhancement  of  authentic  examples  con- 
tributed by  our  erudite  coadjutor  Mr.  Pulszky  to  this,  ought  to 
satisfy  unbiassed  doubters  that  it  is  not  through  the  mere  love  of 
opposition  that  polygenists  claim  a  right  to  demand  some  things 
more  reasonable  than  dogmatic  denial,  before  "the  unity  of  the 
human  species"  can  be  accepted  by  science. 

There  occurs  yet  another  contingency  that,  in  various  countries, 
has  had  a  certain  influence  in  disturbing  the  natural  order  of  some 
tongues,  and  which  philologists  should  not  altogether  ignore.  It  is 
where,  as  in  the  French  "  argots,"  in  the  English  "  slangs,"  or  in  the 
Arabic  dialect  of  the  Awalem,  a  new  idiom  is  invented.  Of  such, 
Oriental  history  presents  us  with  many  curious  examples,  and  Euro- 
pean even  to  the  forgery  of  a  pretended  language.  Thus,  in  China, 
as  mentioned  in  our  former  work,  the  Mandchou  Tartar  dynasty 
coined  five  thousand  new  words  which  they  forced  upon  their  sub- 
jects, as  Champollion-Figeac  says,  "d'emblee  et  par  ordonnance." 
Again,  at  Owyhee,  about  1800,  His  Majesty  Tamaahmaah  invented 
a  new  language,  in  commemoration  of  the  birth  of  a  son ;  but,  accord- 
ing to  Kotzebue,  this  prince  happening  to  die,  the  people  resumed 
their  old  one.  There  are  many  English  colonies  where,  at  this  day, 
judicial  proceedings  in  court,  as  at  Malta  and  Corfu,  can  only  be 
carried  on  in  English ;  and  the  strongest  bulwark  of  the  Ottoman 
rule, — now  extinguishing  itself  in  the  exact  ratio  that,  through  amal- 
gamation, the  pure  Turanian  blood  ebbs  away — was  that  uncom- 
promising instinct  which  forbade  Turks  to  respect  any  language  but 
the  Turkish.  Now,  I  do  not  mean  to  aver  that,  in  any  of  these  eases, 
counterfeits  cannot  be  detected ;  or  that  true  philology  is  unable  to 
discover  the  genuine  stock  from  which  such  invention  may  have 
issued,  so  to  say,  by  the  ring  of  the  metal.  I  am  merely  calling 
attention  to  very  common  circumstances  through  which  the  tongue 
spoken  frequently  contradicts  the  type  of  its  speaker. 

But,  to  close  this  argument:  It  may  be  advanced  by  transcendental 
philology,  that  all  these  distinct  tongues  are  comprehended  within  its 
laws ;  that  is  to  say,  whether  a  transplanted  negro  in  America  speaks 
Cherokee,  a  Jew  expatriated  to  Singapore  adopts  Malay,  or  a  Chi- 
nese brought  up  at  Berlin  converses  in  German,  that,  nevertheless, 
these  languages  —  American,  Malayan,  and  Teutonic  —  that  each 
individual  has  acquired;  together  with  those  idioms  —  African, 
Hebrew,  and  Sinic  —  which  every  individual  has  forgotten,  are  all 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  587 

comprised  within  the  classification  "Arian,  Semitic,  and  Turanian," 
as  understood  by  the  Bunsen-school ;  and  furthermore  that,  like 
unity  in  trinity,  these  three  classes  are  reducible  into  one  primeval 
speech. 

Denying  the  competency  of  any  man  living,  in  the  actual  state 
of  science,  to  be  considered  a  "philologist"  if  he  enunciate  such  a 
doctrine,  I  must  again  refer  to  M.  Maury's  Chapter  I.  in  the  present 
volume  for  proofs  that  the  truth  lies  in  the  contrary  statement. 

Although  the  subject  of  "  chronology"  may  be  here  a  little  out  of 
place,  still,  in  support  of  preceding  remarks  {supra,  pp.  466,  469],  the 
reader  will  not  object  to  my  intercalating  the  substance  of  Chevalier 
Bunsen's  latest  publication  (JEgyptens  Stelle,  Vtes  Buches,  5te  Ab- 
theilung,  pp.  342-59),  in  the  only  space  of  this  volume  where  such 
new  and  interesting  matter  can  be  introduced.  I  am  not  aware  that 
the  work  itself  has  yet  reached  this  country,  but  owe  what  follows  to 
the  considerate  kindness  of  our  collaborator  Mr.  Pulszkt,  through  a 
private  letter  received  here  whilst  finally  correcting  "revises." 


CHEVALIER   BUNSEN'S    CHEONOLOGY. 

Years  before  Christ. 
Origin  op  Mankind.  20,000 

Flood  in  Northern  Asia  —  Emigration  of  the  Arians  from  the  valley  of  the 

Oxus  and  Jaxartes,  and  of  the  Shemites  from  the  valley  of  the  Tigris  and 

Euphrates  — between 10,000  and      11,000 

Egyptian  nomes  (provinces)  under  republican  form 10,000 

But,  the  use  of  hieroglyphical  writing  already  probable  at  about 12,000 

End  of  the  republican  phase  in  Egypt 9,086 

Bttis  the  Theban,  1st  Priest-king 9,085 

End  of  the  Priest-kings 7,231 

[About  this  time  Nimeod,  and  a  Turanian  empire  in  Mesopotamia,  &c] 

Elective  kings  in  Egypt,  from 7,230  to        5,414 

Hereditary  Kings  in  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt, — a  double  empire  from  5,413 

to 3,624 

Menes,  king  of  united  Egypt B.C.  3623 


Great  Chaldtean  empire  begins  in  Babylonia 

Zokoastek,  between  3500  and 

Foundation  of  Babylon 

Tyrian  chronology  begins ... 

Exodus  of  the  Israelites < 

Semiramis 1273  to 

Solomon's  era 

&o.  &c. 


3784 
3000 
3250 
2760 
1320 
1200 
1017 


588 


THE    ilONOGENISTS     AND 


CONCLUSIONS. 

PROTESTANT. 

Acts  xvii,  26.  Textus  revisus,  A.  d.  1857. 

"  iirotViv  «  i%  ivo.c  wav  Uwg  avfycliiiuv  "  fecitque  ex  uno  omne  (homine) 

xaroixsTv  iiri  tiavrds  irpotfoiirou    t%  genus    hominum     inhabitare 

yns"            ■  supra   universam  faciem  ter- 

r£e_"535 


CATHOLIC. 

"  ifolrtsev  <re  Jg  Ivos  *av  ysmg.  dvUpcovuv     "Fecitque    ex  uno   omne   genus 
xaroixsh  iwi  ifuvrbs  ffpo<r«Wou  Tijs  hominum     inhabitare     supra 

yns"  universam  faciem  terrse."536 


"Eiroiijff's   7&  e%  svos  irav   s^vos  avdpwTrwv.' 


TEXTTJS     RECEPTUS GREEK.3 

nan  cOfog   dvBpunuw   KarotKCtv   ini 
vav  to  -poaciiirov    I    rijj   yfjff." 


TEXTUS     RECEPTUS LATIN."3 

"  fecitque  ex  uno  omne  genus  hominum 

inhabitare  supra  universam  faciem  terrse." 


French   Catholic.5*0  French  Protestanl.sa 

"II  a  fait  nattre  d'un  seul  toute  la  race  des  "Et  il  a  fait  d'un  seul  sang  tout  le  genre 

hommes,  el  il  leur  a  donne  pour  demeure  humain  pour  habiter  sur  toute  l'e'tendue 

toute  1'^tendue  de  la  terre."  de  la  terre." 


English   Catholic. 
"And  hath  made  of  one,  all  mankind, 

to  dwell  upon  the  whole  face  of  the  earth."642 


1.643 

"And  [he]  hath  made  of  one 
Blood  [of  Adam]  all  Na- 
tions of  Men  to  dwell  on 
all  the  Face  of  the 
Earth." 


Varianles  leciiones. 

'  and  has  made  every  Na- 
tion of  Men  of  the  same 
Blood,"  &c. 


3.5*5 
'  and    hath    made    of    one 
blood  all  nations  of  men 
to  dwell   on  all  the  face 
of  the  earth." 


THE     POLTGENISTS. 


589 


English  Versions  of  Acts  xvii,  26. 546 


Wyclif,  1380. 
"and  made  of  oon 
alle  kynde  of 
men  to  enha- 
bite  on  al  the 
face  of  the 
erthe." 

(From  the  Latin 
Vulgate.) 


Ttndale,  1534. 

"and  hath  made 
of  one  bloud 
all  nacions  of 
men,  for  to 
dwell  on  all 
the  face  of  the 
erthe." 

(From  the  Greek 
printed  Text.) 


Cbanmer,  1539. 

"and  hath  made 
of  one  bloud 
all  nacions  of 
men,  for  to 
dwell  on  all 
the  face  of  the 
earth." 

(From  the  Greek 
printed  Text.) 


Geneva,  1557. 
"and  hath  made 
of  one  bloud 
all  man  kynde, 
for  to  dwel  on 
all  the  face  of 
the  earth." 

(From  the  Greek 
printed  Text.) 


Rheims,  1582.  * 
"  and  he  hath 
made  of  one  al 
mankinde  to 
inhabite  upon 
the  whole  face 
of  the  earth." 

(From  the  Latin 
Vulgate.) 


Authorized,"  161L 
"and  hath  made 
of  one  blood 
all  nations  of 
men,  for  to 
dwell  on  all 
the  face  of  the 
earth." 
(From  the  Greek 
printed  Text.) 


535  Novum  Testament.  Greece  et  Latine  —  Carolus  Lachmannus  reconsuit.  Philippos 
Botmannus  Ph.  F.  Greece  Lectionis  Auc  tori  tat  is  apposuit.  BeroKni,  1850,  tomus  alter, 
p.  126.  [Readings: — ii>5<;  alone  in  Cod.  Alex,  and  Vat.  Cantab.  Laud.,  and  Cantab.  Laud., 
Elzivir  ed.  1624,  and  Iren^us,  add  the  word  "blood."] 

536  H  KALNH  AIAGHKH.  Novum  Testamentum  Greece  et  Latine.  In  Antiquis  Tesiibus 
Textum  Versionis  Vulgatm  Latince  indagavit  Lectionesque  variantes  Stephani  et  Griesbacckii 
notavit  V.  S.  Venerabili  Jager  in  consilium  adhibito  Constantinv/s  Tischendorf  (Editio  DD. 
Affre  Archiepiscopo  Parisiensi  dicata) : — Paris,  1842,  p.  225.     [Readings: — "St.  [Stephen] 

Gb.   [Greisbach],  lvos  ai/iarog  jrav  Wfas  et  Ini  nav  Trptfutdn'Oi'."] 

537  Harwood's  Neio  Testament  (without  points),  London,  12mo,  1776,  I,  p.  342. 

538  Scholz,  Novum  Testamentum  Greecee,  Lipsiee,  1836,  IT,  p.  67. 

539  Bibliorum  Sacrorum  Vulgatee  Versionis  editio,  Paris,  4to  (Didot),  1785,  p.  405. 

540  La  Sainte  Bible,  traduite  sur  la  Vulgate,  par  Le  Maistre  de  Sact,  Paris  ed.,  1849, 
Nouv.  Test.  p.  148. 

541  L a  Sainte  Bible, —  revue  sur  les  originaux  et  retouche*  dans  le  langage,  par  David 
Martin,  Ministre  du  Saint-Evangile,  a  Utrecht;  Paris  (Didot),  1839 — Nouv.  Test.,  p.  178. 

542  "The  Holy  Bible,  translated  from  the  Latin  Vulgate"— Old  Testament,  Doway,  1609; 
New  Testament,  Rheims,  1582  (approved  by  the  most  reverend  Doctor  Troy,  R.  C.  A.  D.), 
—  Dublin,  4to,  1816,  p.  193. 

543  Whitbt,  Paraphrase  and  Commentary  on  the  New  Testament,  London,  4to,  6th  ed.,  1744; 
1,  p.  694. 

544  Purver,  New  and  Literal  Translation,  &c,  with  notes,  London,  8vo,  1764,  II,  p.  171. 

545  Sharpe,  The  New  Testament  translated  from  GriesbacWs  Text,  London,  12mo,  2d  ed., 
p.  257. 

546  "The  English  Hexapla,  exhibiting  the  sis  important  English  Translations  of  the  New 
Testament  Scriptures,"  London,  4to,  1841,  voce  "Acts  xvii,  26." 

[Have  been  collated  for  Texts  and  Versions;  and  examined  for  Variants,  Commentaries, 
and  Notes  — 

Le  Jay's  Polyglotte,  Paris,  fol.,  1645,  "Acta  Apostolorum,"  V,  part  2d,  p.  120: — Walton's 
Biblia  Polyglotta,  Oxford,  fol.,  1657,  V,  pp.  588-9:  —  Greisbachii  Novum  Testamentum, 
Cantabrigise,  8vo,  1809,  p.  329: — Id.,  Paris,  18mo,  p.  338: — Wetstein  and  Griesbach's 
N.  Test.,  London,  12mo,  1808,  sub  voce: — Adam  Clarke's  Bible,  N.  Test.,  London,  1836,  I, 
p.  855:  —  Albert  Barnes's  "Notes,  explanatory  and  practical,  on  the  New  Testament" 
{Cobbin's  reprint),  London,  4to,  1848,  p.  485: — Scott's  Bible,  III,  p.  335: — Henry's  Bible, 
III,  p.  613:  —  "Society  for  promoting  Christian  Knowledge's"  Bible,  "cum  privilegio," 
Oxford,  4to,  1817,  II,  sub  voce:  —  Bloomfield,  "Greek  Testament,  with  English  notes," 
London,  4to,  1843,  5th  ed.,  p.  639: — Alford,  "The  Greek  Testament:  with  a  critically 
revised  Text,"  &c,  Cambridge,  8vo,  1854,  II,  pp.  180-1:  — &c,  &c,  &c] 


590  THE     MONOGElSriSTS     AND 

Whatever  may  be,  out  of  England,  the  general  estimation  in 
which  her  Universities  are  held  for  Hebraical  scholarship,  none  will 
dare  say  that  the  country,  which  gave  birth  to  a  Bentley  and  a 
Porteus,  has,  in  solid  Greek  learning,  ever  lacked  a  man  to  stand, 
like  Jonadab  the  son  of  Rechab,  "before  (IeHOuaH)  for  ever.' 
The  difference  between  the  last  century  and  the  present,  in  English 
Hellenic  studies,  seems  chiefly  to  lie  in  the  fact  that,  having  ex- 
hausted extant  literary  sources  in  Grecian  drama  and  philosophy, 
the  critical  apparatus  derived  from  those  honored  pursuits  is  now 
becoming  intensely  directed  towards  the  verbal  restoration  of  the 
original  books  composing  the  New  Testament;  and  the  names  of 
Davidson,  Alford,  Sharpe,  and  Tregelles,  are  the  well-known 
representatives  of  this  new  school,  in  different  phases  of  its  ten- 
dency. 

The  first-mentioned,  speaking  of  the  Palestinic  period  some  1800 
years  ago,  allows :  "  The  age  was  one  of  illiterate  simplicity.  The 
apostles  themselves  were  from  the  humblest  ranks  of  society.  Their 
abilities  and  education  were  tolerably  alike.  *  *  *  The  age  was 
illiterate.  They  belonged,  for  the  most  part,  to  a  class  of  society 
unpractised  in  the  art  of  writing."547  The  second  frankly  avows:  "I 
do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  [verbal  inspiration]  being  thus  applied, 
its  effect  will  be  to  destroy  altogether  the  credibility  of  our  Evange- 
lists."518 The  third  published,  last  year,  that  most  useful  little  book, 
Notes  introductory  to  the  New  Testament.  And  the  fourth  uses  the 
following  language:  "It  is  a  cause  for  thankfulness  that  the  common 
Greek  text  [of  the  New  Testament]  is  no  worse  than  it  is ;  but  it  is 
a  cause  for  humiliation  (and  with  sober  sadness  do  I  write  the  word) 
that  Christian  translators  have  not  acted  with  a  more  large-souled 
and  intelligent  honesty."549 

The  foregoing  remarks  arise  from  the  imperative  necessity  of 

547  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament,  &c,  London,  1848,  I,  pp.  408,  417.  Jo.  Lamius 
(De  erudilione  Apostolorum.  Liber  singularis  in  quo  multa  quce  ad  primilivorum  Christianorum 
liieras,  doctrinas,  scripta,  placita,  sludia,  eondilionem,  censum,  mores,  el  rilus  attinent,  exponun- 
tur  et  illustrantur :  editio  altera,  4to,  Florentise,  anno  MDCCLXVI,  "Censorious  permitten- 
tibus,"  pp.  477-991), — publishing  in  Italy  when  the  Italian  Catholic  mind  had  not  yet 
endured  a  "Francesco,"  a  "Maffei,"  or  a  "Boniba," — had  long  previously  established 
apostolic  incapacity  in  the  republic  of  letters.  As  one  among  the  "workies" — and  I  say 
it  with  pride  —  to  tread  down,  and  keep  down,  what  embers  of  intolerance  may  yet  smoke 
in  my  adopted  country,  I  can  join  in  gratulation  with  citizens  of  our  republic  of  America — 
mais  (ici)  nous  avons  change1  tout  cela." 

648  Greek  Testament:  with  a  critically  revised  Text,  &c,  London,  1854;  I,  Prolegomena,  p. 
20.  Alford  (II,  p.  181)  expressly  cautions  us  to  read  Acts  xvii,  26 — "Not,  'hath  made 
of  one  blood,'  &c,  as  E.  V.  but  'caused  evert  nation  of  men  (sprung)  of  one  blood,' 
&c.     See  Matt,  v,  32,  Mark  vii,  37." 

549  Account  of  the  Printed  Text  of  the  Greek  New  Testament,  London,  1855,  p.  267. 


THE     POL  YGEISTI  ST  S.  591 

vindicating,  once  for  all,  in  ethnological  discussion,  the  accuracy  of 
my  colleague's  and  my  own  observations  in  the  joint  volume  which 
preceded  the  present."660 

Those  assertions  having  been  flatly  contradicted,  Dr.  JSTott,551 
when  resuming  the  subject,  stated,  "The  word  blood  is  an  interpola- 
tion, and  not  to  be  found  in  the  original  texts.  The  word  blood  has 
been  rejected  by  the  Catholic  Church,  from  the  time  of  St.  Jerome 
to  the  present  hour.  The  text  of  Tischendorf  is  regarded,  I  believe, 
generally  as  the  most  accurate  Greek  text  known,  and  in  this  the 
word  '  blood '  does  not  appear.  I  have  at  hand  a  long  list  of  authori- 
ties to  the  same  effect ;  but  as  it  is  presumed  no  competent  authority 
will  call  our  assertion  in  question,  it  is  needless  to  cite  them.  The 
verse  above  alluded  to  in  Acts  should,  therefore,  read : — 

"  'And  hath  made  of  one  all  races  (genus)  of  men,'  &c. 

"  The  word  blood  is  a  gloss ;  and  we  have  just  as  much  right  to 
interpolate  one  form,  one  substance,  one  nature,  one  responsibility,  or 
anything  else,  as  blood." 

Many  incompetent  authorities,  nevertheless,  still  continuing  to 
question  my  collaborator's  correctness,  I  feel  it  incumbent  upon  my- 
self to  prove  that  he  was  perfectly  right.  I  hope  the  foregoing  array 
of  texts  and  references,  among  which  is  Tischendorf's  much-prized 
authority,  will  obviate  future  discussion  of  others  amongst  them- 
selves.    It  will  forever  with  myself. 

But,  so  swiftly  does  archaeological  criticism  advance  on  the  Euro- 
pean continent,  that  even  Tischendorf 's  Text  now  falls — although  in 
this  particular,  verse,  by  leaving  out  "blood,"  the  highest  Catholic 
Hellenism  (as  it  generally  does)  coincides  with  that  employed  in  the 
"rational  method" — behind  the  age  of  Lachmann's ;  whose  Text 
heads  the  list,  justly  eulogized  by  Tregelles653  in  these  words: — "The 
first  Greek  Testament,  since  the  invention  of  printing,  edited  wholly  on 
ancient  authority,  irrespective  of  modern  traditions,  is  due  to  Chakles 
Lachmann." 

It  becomes,  in  consequence,  evident  to  the  reader  that  scientific 
arguments  (in  England  at  last,  as  they  have  ever  been  on  the  conti- 
nent), in  which  texts  of  the  Greek  Scriptures  are  involved,  are  neither 
carried  on,  at  the  present  day,  upon  the  obsolete  English  Version  of 

650  Types  of  Mankind,  Chap.  XV,  "Biblical  Ethnography:  —  Section  E. — Terms,  Universal 
and  Specific" —  pp.  558-9. 

651  The  Moral  and  Intellectual  Diversity  of  Races,  &c. — from  the  French  of  Count  A.  de  Gobi- 
neau  —  by  H.  Hotz  ;  Philadelphia,  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co.,  12mo,  1856  ;  appendix  C,  p.  512. 

652  Op.  cit.,  p.  113:  See  also  the  same  author's  admirable  "Lecture  on  the  Historic  evi- 
dence of  the  authorship  and  transmission  of  the  Books  of  the  New  Testament,"  London, 
12mo,  1852,  passim. 


592  THE     MONOGENISTS    AND 

king  James,  nor  upon  the  antiquated  "textus  receptus"  of  the  old 
printed  Greek  exemplar; — but  are  henceforward  to  be  made  exclu- 
sively upon  a  Textus  revisus  that  pending  researches  are  combining 
to  establish — some  of  the  slighter  difficulties  in  regard  to  which  are 
manifested  above  in  the  various  readings  of  one  line  of  the  Greek 
"Good  Tidings."  And,  in  order  to  substantiate  what  I  have  just 
said,  that  Romanist  learning  frequently  agrees  with  the  most  rigidly 
exegetical,  a  quotation  from  the  commentary  of  Bishop  Kenrick553 
will,  in  these  United  States,  not  fail  to  be  respected :  — 

Text,  Acts  XVII,  26  —  "And  He  hath  made  of  one  all  mankind." 

Note,  on  MSS.  and  traditions,  "  5.  G.  P. '  of  one  blood.'   The  Vulgate 

reading  is  conformable  to  the  Alexan- 
drian and  three  other  Manuscripts,  as 
also  to  that  used  by  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria. The  Coptic  version  agrees 
with  it." 

Those  who  desire  to  pursue  speculative  guesses  as  to  how,  why, 
when,  and  by  whom,  the  word  alamos  {blood)  crept  into  the  Text,  will 
readily  find,  amid  the  works  cited  (supra,  note  546),  some  very  learned 
and  ingenious  explanations,  and  more  commentaries  inexpressibly 
silly.  ISTone,  however,  can  be  discovered  that  satisfy,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  the  exigenda  of  archagological,  palseographical,  and  eth- 
nological criticism. 

As  to  the  first  requirement:  It  was  shown  from  Hennel554  that 
the  passage  in  question  was  not  autographed  by  St.  Paul  himself, 
but  proceeds  from  his  secretary — the  writer  of  Acts — probably  author 
of  the  Hid  Gospel,  supposed  to  be  "St.  Luke."  The  learned  and 
Reverend  Lord  Arthur  Hervey  judiciously  remarks:  —  " There  is 
also  a  peculiar  difficulty  in  dealing  with  the  Scriptures  in  such  mat- 
ters,  from  our  ignorance  of  the  precise  limits  of  inspiration,  and  of 
the  degree  of  control  exercised  by  the  Holy  Spirit  over  the  writers, 
compilers,  and  editors  of  the  sacred  books,  in  such  matters  as  history, 
science,  and  the  like.  *  *  *  It  certainly  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
the  purpose  of  inspiration  to  teach  miraculously  any  arts  or  sciences, 
and  therefore  it  should  not  be  deemed  more  derogatory  to  the  inspi- 
ration of  St.  Paul  or  St.  Luke,  that  they  were  not  beyond  the  most 
learned  of  their  contemporaries  in  the  science  of  chronology,  than  it 
would  be  were  we  to  discover  that  St.  Paul  came  short  of  modern 
skill  in  the  art  of  tent-making,  or  that  St.  Luke  had  not  all  the  phy- 
siological knowledge  attained  by  the  most  eminent  physicians  of  our 

653  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  New  York,  8vo,  1851,  p.  111. 
65*  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  559. 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  593 

time."555  "When,  therefore,  as  in  four  out  of  the  five  new-school  com- 
mentators just  cited,  we  behold  really  learned  and  strictly  orthodox 
Churchmen,  our  contemporaries,  making  such  honest  admissions,  a 
"Protestant  dissenter"  like  myself, — whose  education  has  been  derived 
from  totally  different  pursuits,  in  lands  altogether  foreign  to  their 
insular  associations  —  may  legitimately  re-examine  Pauline  subjects 
from  the  archaeological  stand-point  alone.  Hence,  the  only  really 
historical  fact  deducible  from  all  the  above  quotations  is,  that  the 
Greek  word  "blood,"  not  being  in  the  MS.  used  by  Clemens  Alex- 
andrinus  (a.  d.  192-217),  but  occurring  in  that  studied  by  Iren^us 
(a.  d.  140-202),  the  intercalation  was  already  made  within  say  1 50 
years  after  the  unknown  year  of  the  demise  of  St.  Luke. 

Now,  any  one  who  has  inspected  ancient  Greek  manuscripts  and 
epigraphy  (I  myself  have  only  seen  a  few  decades),  knows  very  well 
that,  in  the  most  archaic,  the  words  run  on,  without  divisions,  in  the 
same  line  "  continua  serie."  Of  the  ancient  Apostolic  books  extant 
we  possess  none  written  earlier  that  the  5th-6th  centuries  of  our 
era,556 — that  is,  about  200  years  later  than  Clemens  and  Irenseus,  or 
some  350  posterior  to  St.  Luke ;  and  in  the  two  most  antique  codices, 
LXX  Alexandrinus  and  Vaticanus,  the  word  ai'fiaro;  does  not  recur. 
No  one  either  will  pretend  that  St.  Luke  took  down  St.  Paul's  speech 
at  the  time;  or  that  the  Evangelist  used  stenographic  processes, — any 
more  than  claim  that  the  "reporter"  at  Athens  adopted  Morse's 
magnetic  telegraph.  Hence,  neither  the  credibility  of  St.  Paul,  nor 
that  of  St.  Luke,  is  involved  in  our  debate. 

The  simplest  and  most  rational  method  of  explaining  why  this  word 
"blood"  crept  into  the  later  Greek  Texts, — into  the  Latin  it  never  did 
— is  seen  upon  reflecting  how,  some  early  Christian  anchorite,  devoutly 
poi'ing  over  his  MS.  of  Acts,  had  his  attention  arrested,  whilst  reading 
"and  hath  made  of  one,"  by  a  natural  and  impulsive  query — "owe/ 
one  what?"  As  a  memento,  he  noted  "aifAai-os"  on  the  margin  of  his 
exemplar ;  but  unaccompanied  by  a  note  of  interrogation  "  ? " — because 
such  interjectional  signs  were  not  then  invented.  Within  a  generation 
or  two  afterwards,  but  before  Irengeus,  some  amanuensis,  transcribing 
our  anchorite's  much-worn  codex  into  less  archaic  calligraphy  and 
orthography,  meeting  with  ai>a<ros  on  the  margin,  fancied  that  the 
word  had  been  accidentally  omitted,  out  of  the  Text,  by  the  antecedent 
scribe.  So  the  latter,  with  no  fraudulent  intent,  auy  more  than  our 
aforesaid  anchorite,  inserted  the  Greek  for  "blood"  in  his  own  tran- 
script; to  the  gladdening  of  the  hearts  of  some  pious  readers  of  English, 

655  The  Genealogies  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  ascertained  in  the  Gosjiels  of  St. 
Matthew  and  St.  Luke,  &c,  London,  8vo,  1853;  pp.  249,  256. 

656  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  612,  714. 

38 


594  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

and  the  bewilderment  of  the  minds  of  others,  1600  years  later,  as 
well  in  Old  England  as  in  New. 

Thirdly.  However  learned,  however  venerable,  may  be  the  scholars 
whose  words  I  have  cited  with  no  disrespect,  none  of  them  will  lay 
claim  to  proficiency  in  Ethnology,  nor  have  any  of  them  spent  half  a 
lifetime  in  the  Levant.  If  they  had,  they  would  have  known  that 
there,  at  this  very  hour,  the  same  old  repugnance  (which  their  classi- 
cal scholarship  makes  them  perfectly  well  cognizant  of,  in  ancient 
Alexandria  particularly)  is  still  rife  now  with  evils  to  human  welfare 
that  have  always  rendered  Jews  and  the  Greeks  antagonistic  to  each 
other.  I  remember  (and  have  I  not  shuddered  over  its  blackened 
ruins  ?)  how,  at  Tripolitza,  on  the  first  flash  of  Greek  independence, 
when,  capitulating  on  the  faith  of  the  "honors  of  war,"  the  Turkish 
garrison  and  Ottoman  community  were  massacred,  that,  whilst  the 
Mainiot  palikaries  spared  a  few  of  the  Muslim  girls  and  boys,  they 
did  not  leave  a  man,  woman,  or  child,  of  the  Israelites  alive.  Eye- 
witnesses afterwards  confirmed  to  me  such  atrocity  during  10  months 
(1829)  that,  "for  my  sins,"  I  waited  at  Napoli  di  Romania  in  the 
vain  hope  of  obtaining,  from  Capodistrias,  a  tribunal  whence  to 
obtain  back,  in  part,  the  value  (only  $800,000)  of  36  cargoes  in  which 
my  father  was  concerned,  robbed  by  Greek  pirates  between  1824  and 
1828.  I  remember  too,  that  it  was  this  soul-harrowing  outrage — 
first  of  hundreds  perpetrated  by  Moreot  Christian  serfs — that  caused 
Mussulman  reverberation  at  the  butcheries  of  Smyrna,  Scio,  and 
Ha'ivali;  and,  although  Mohammed  Ali's  iron  firmness  joined  to  a 
numerous  and  tolerably  armed  European  population  alone  spared  us 
(1822)  from  witnessing  similar  abominations  in  Egypt,  I  recollect 
that,  wherever,  at  Smyrna  especially,  some  hapless  Greek  fugitive 
dodged  the  tophaik  or  yatagan,  his  hiding-place  was  invariably 
betrayed  if  known  to  any  Jew;  who,  after  Tripolitza  and  Missolonghi, 
naturally  felt — 

"  And  if  ye  wrong  lis,  shall  we  not  revenge?" 

So  true  is  this,  that  the  Hebrew  serrdfs  (money-changers  —  not 
seraphs)  evacuated  Greece  exactly  in  the  ratio  that  the  Ottoman 
lords  of  the  manor  were  forced  to  strike  their  tents  and  flee.  No 
Hebrew  lives  willingly  where  Greeks  rule ;  any  more  than  (and 
partly  for  the  same  reason)  he  likes  residence  in  Scotland  or  in  Con- 
necticut: and,  even  in  their  commercial  relations  everywhere, 
Grecian  and  Israelitish  instincts  are  invariably  in  antagonism. 
Now,  classical  history  on  the  one  hand,  the  New  Testament  and  the 
Talmudic  books  on  the  other,  demonstrate  precisely  the  same  hostile 
and  repulsive  feelings,  between  the  Shemites  of  Hierosolyma  and 


THE     POLTGENISTS.  595 

the  "Andres  Athenaioi,"  much  farther  back  than  the  day  when  St. 
Paul  and  St.  Luke  were  jibed  by  Indo-European  mobility  at  tbe 
Areopagus.  I  need  not  dwell  on  the  context  of  Acts  XVII,  to 
establish  the  non-success  of  two  Jews — one  a  "  Hebrew  of  Hebrews" 
—  who  in  cacophonious  Hellenistic-idiom557  addressed  the  orthoepic 
and  satirical  men  of  Athens ;  but,  I  maintain,  and  if  necessary 
hereafter  will  historically  prove,  that  the  speaker  (whether  St.  Paul 
himself,  or  St.  Luke,  or  the  "reporter")  in  making  use, —  amidst  the 
knot  of  hard-hearted,  if  not  soft-headed,  Athenian  "gamins"  col- 
lected on  Mars'  Hill — of  the  phrase  "hath  made  of  one"  all  mankind, 
intended  thereby  to  deprecate  that  (by  the  Jewish  speaker  strongly 
felt)  Hellenic  instinctive  xenolasia  toward  Hebrews,  which  led  the 
former  (boasters  that  themselves  were  Autochthones)  to  repudiate  the 
notion  that  a  particle  of  Jewish  "blood"  flowed  in  their  own  veins. 
If  this  fact  be  disagreeable,  I  cannot  help  it.  In  anthropology  the 
maxim  must  be  — 

"  Tros  Tyrusque  mihi  nullo  discrimine  agetur." 

The  question,  of  the  existence  of  AIMAT02  in  the  original  manu- 
script of  St.  Luke,  "  me  parait,"  as  Mariette  says  of  that  of  the 
Apis-cycle  [supra,  p.  404),  "  defmitivement  enterree."  With  it, 
also,  its  imagined  corollary,  that  St.  Paul  ever  meant  that  all  the 
races  of  mankind,  within  the  Poman  limit  of  geography  in  his 
time,  were  "made  of  one  blood."  Polygenists,  therefore, —  so  far  as 
Acts  xvii,  26,  be  concerned  —  are  henceforward  exempt  from  suspi- 

Kl  'EAXrjHoTiif,  liaXacTos  [inj,  ffellenismus,  Lingua  Hellcnistica,  &c.  — Consult  Samuel  David 
Luzzato  (Professor  in  the  Rabbinical  College  of  Padua),  Prolegomena  ad  una  Grammatica 
Ragionata  della  Lingua  Ebraica ;  Padova,  8vo,  1836,  pp.  11,  67,  78-95:  —  Giambernakdo 
de  Rossi  [Della  Lingua  propria  di  Christo  e  degli  Ebrei  nazionali  della  Palestina  da'  tempi 
de'  Maccabei  dissertazione,  Parma,  8vo,  1772,  pp.  7,  16,  37-9,  85-129,  145-8).  From  the 
latter  I  present  merely  a  few  abstracts.  The  Palestinic  Jews  always  repudiated  Greek 
translations.  So  particular  were  their  lineal  descendants  in  Spain,  that  Rabbi  Immanuel 
Aboab  Bays  (in  his  rare  Nomology,  or  Legal  Discourse),  "una  sola  letra,  que  tenga  de  mas 
o  de  menos  (aun  que  no  varie  el  sentido)  queda  siendo  profano,  y  no  nos  es  lecito  leer  en 
el.  *  *  *  En  la  biblias  griegas  intitoladas  de  los  Sentenia  Inlerpretes,  hallo  una  variedad  y 
differencia  tan  grande  en  les  estampas  que  no  ay  passo  conforme."  The  Talmud  (tract 
Sabbat)  gives  the  injunction  of  Rabban  Gamaliel,  how  translations  should  be  thrown  into 
"luoghi  cenosi  e  sporchi,  aceiocche  eglino  imputridiscano  da  loro  medesimi."  In  another 
of  his  prodigious  labors  on  the  Text  (Compendio  di  Gritica  Sacra,  Parma,  8vo,  1811,  p.  8.8), 
De  Rossi  victoriously  exonerates  the  Council  of  Trent  from  accusations  of  tolerating  no 
Bible  but  the  Vulgate.  Here  is  his  Italian  version  of  the  text  of  their  decree,  —  the  Latin 
of  which  is  in  his  other  work  (Prcecipuis  Caussis,  Turin,  4to,  1769,  pp.  79-80). 

"  Considerando  che  non  piccol  vantaggio  ne  verrebbe  la  Chiesa,  qualora  si  conosee,  di 
tutte  le  latine  edizioni  che  girano  de'  sacri  libri,  quale  s'abbia  a  tenere  per  autentica,  [the 
Council]  stabilisce  e  dichiara,  che  questa  stessa  edizione  antica  e  volgata,  la  quale  da  un 
lungo  uso  di  tanti  secoli  e  stata  nella  Chiesa  medesima  approvata,  sia  tenuta  per  autentica." 


596  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

cion  of  heresy.  But,  before  quitting  so  dry  a  subject,  I  must  gratify 
the  reader  with  a  pair  of  extracts  from  two  different  works, — parallel 
in  critical  calibre,  and  similar  through  an  accident,  that  each  of  their 
authors  boasts  of  an  Allemanic  surname — which  will  exemplify  into 
what  helpless  vagaries  this  apochryphal  noun  "blood"  has  lifted  up 
two  most  talented  monogenists  above  the  multitude. 

Sample  A  is  chosen  from  the  pages  of  Sir  Robert  H.  Schom- 
burgk,558  writing  for  the  English  public. 

A.  — "  Many  scoffers  have  attempted  to  establish  the  hypothesis, 
that  the  first  germs  of  the  development  of  the  human  race  in  America, 
can  be  sought  for  nowhere  but  in  that  quarter  of  the  globe ;  but 
unless  it  can  be  proved  that  the  laws  of  nature  are  in  direct  viola- 
tion with  Mosaic  \_sic! !  !~\  records,  which  expressly  say  that  '  God  has 
made  of  one  blood  all  the  nations  of  men  to  dwell  on  all  the  face 
of  the  earth,'  we  must  still  appeal  to  that  Holy  Book  for  interpreta- 
tion [that  is,  '  we  must'  hunt  through  the  Pentateuch  for  Acts  XVII, 
26  !]." 

Sample  B  is  taken  from  some  pages  in  the  Charleston  Medical 
Journal,6®  composed  by  an  author560  writing  for  the  American  public. 
With  the  exception  of  the  figures  appended,  our  compositors  have 
been  so  good  as  to  set  it  up  in  fac-simile. 

B. — "We  are  advocating  the  doctrine  of  the  Unity  of  the  Human  Race  simply  on  scien-  1 

tine  principles.     We  care  not  to  make  issues  on  points  that  have  no  legitimate  bearing  2 

on  the  subject  to  -which  we  are  restricted  in  this  discussion.    Those  with  whom  we  intend  3 

to  have  no  controversy  have  nothing  to  apprehend  from  our  criticisms.     We  may,  how-  4 

ever,  here  observe  that  the  figures  of  dogs  and  of  men  (the  latter  only  are  of  any  scien-  5 

tine  value,)  on  the  eastern  monuments,  have  been  carefully  studied  and  delineated  by  6 

master-minds  —  men,  at  whose  feet  Mr.  Gliddon  has  set  as  an  humble  copyist.     They  7 

have  commenced  giving  to  the  world  the  result  of  their  scientific  researches.     Both  8 

Lepsius  and  Bunsen  have  already  proclaimed  their  belief  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Unity  of  9 

the  Human  Race,  and  the  former,  as  we  are  informed,  is  now  engaged  in  a  work,  in  10 

which  he  will  offer  reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in  him.     Thus  these  monumental  records,  11 

which  caused  Gliddon  to  pronounce  in  the  language  of   scorn  and  obloquy  a  tirade  12 

against  the  scriptures,  convinced  the  minds  of  Lepsius  and  Bunsen  of  their  truth,  and  13 

filled  them  with  humility,  reverence,   and   awe.     Their  scientific  researches  satisfied  14 

them  of  the  doctrines  proclaimed  by  Moses,  and  confirmed  by  Paul.  15 

"  'And  (God)  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men  for  to  dwell  on  the  face  of  16 

the  earth,  and  hath  determined  the  times  before  appointed,  and  the  bounds  of  their  17 

habitation.'     Acts  17  ch.  26  v.  18 

558  Twelve  Views  in  British  Guiana,  &c,  London,  folio,  1841,  p.  29. 

559  Charleston,  S.  C,  1854  —  republished  as  a  Monograph,  "An  Examination  of  the 
characteristics  of  Genera  and  Species  as  applicable  to  the  Doctrine  of  the  Unity  of  the 
Human  Race,"  pp.  22-3.  Its  author  rides,  or  is  bestridden  by,  two  hobbies,  —  the  one 
theological,  and  the  other  mammalogical.  His  duplex  equitation  maw  airOu — (See  Stkauss, 
Vie  de  Jesus,  transl.  Littrf,  Paris,  1839,  II,  le  partie,  pp.  302-13) — always  puts  me  in  mind 
cf  an  "old,  and  musty"  Greek  proverb,  how  —  "Leucon  carried  one  thing,  and  his  ass 
another." 

660  Types  of  Manlcind,  p.  628,  foot-note  210;  and  "Memoir  of  Morton,"  pp.  liii-vi. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  597 

"These  distinguished  naturalists  both  arrived  at  the  conclusion,  from  these  very  19 
monuments,  that  the  negro  races  had  only  been  developed  in  the  course  of  ages  within  20 
the  African  tropics  and  were  derived  from  Egypt.  The  minds  of  men  are  differently  21 
constituted,  and  we  here  perceive  what  opposite  impressions  are  made  on  different  22 
minds  in  visiting  the  same  localities,  and  in  investigating  the  same  subjects."  23 

Now,  in  reprinting  this  specimen  of  the  style  adopted  hy  a 
"Dutch-Reformed"  theologer  in  this  country,  my  only  regrets  lie  in 
the  unavoidable  mention  of  two  world-renowned,  and  by  myself 
much-honored,  names — Chevaliers  Bunsejj  and  Lepsius:  at  the  feet 
of  whom  (like  St.  Paul  "  at  the  feet  of  Gamaliel  "j561 1  have  always 
felt  proud  to  sit  for  instruction, — received,  as  not  a  slight  portion  of 
what  little  I  know  has  been,  oftentimes  with  mine  own  feet  under 
their  respective  mahoganies. 

What  concerns  the  reader,  however,  is  the  logical  deduction, —  on 
comparing  lines  14-15  with  line  19  of  the  above  extract — that 
"Moses"  and  "Paul"  were  "distinguished  naturalists  both"  ! 

Nobody,  who  reads,  writes,  and  ciphers,  can  be  such  an  ignoramus 
as  not  to  know,  that  Chevaliers  Bunsen  and  Lepsius — occupied  in 
other  equally-elevated  branches  of  human  science,  such  as  archaeology, 
history,  philosophy,  and  linguistics — would  disdain  (whatever,  as 
educated  gentlemen,  they  may  read  about  Natural  History)  to  accept 
an  attribution  to  themselves  severally  of  any  scientific  speciality  not 
within  the  circumference  of  their  respective  studies.  The  pages  of 
this  volume  will  be  the  first  intimation  either  of  these  Savans  receives 
that  both  of  them  are  suspected  to  be  "naturalists,"' — and  that,  too, 
by  a  fractious  sciolist  who  actually  wrote  a  book  to  demonstrate  the 
Unity  of  Mankind  without  having  read  the  first  syllable  of  Pri- 
chaed.562     "Potete  frenarvi  dalle  risa?     0  miei  valenti  amici !" 

Where  did  either  Chev.  Lepsius  or  Chev.  Bunsen  ever  say,  that 
"negro  races  *  *  *  were  derived  from  Egypt"  [?]  (supra,  lines  20—1). 

The  last  three  lines,  21-3,  prove  how  the  same  writer — utterly  des- 
titute of  any  Egyptological  works  —  fancies  that  the  great  Prussian 
Ambassador  to  Rome  and  England  has  visited  Egypt.  Everybody  else 
knows  that  Chevalier  Bnnsen's  travels  never  extended  beyond  Europe. 

Finally,  the  only  expression,  known  to  the  world,  of  Chev.  Lep- 
sius's  impressions,  in  regard  to  human  monogenism  or  polygenism, 
is  derived  from  a  casual  remark  made  by  him  in  a  friendly  letter  to 
my  respected  colleague  Dr.  J.  C.  Nott:  and  by  the  latter  inserted  in 
our  first  joint  publication,  for  the  very  object  of  not  involving  the 
honored  Egj^ptologist  of  Berlin  in  any  blame  that  might  accrue  to 

661  Were  it  obligatory  upon  me  to  digress  upon  Pauline  themes  in  general,  their  analysis 
would  cost  no  more  trouble  than  reference  to  an  octavo  (London,  1818),  attributed  to  the 
capacious  brain  of  a  great  jurist— Jeremy  Bentham — entitled,  "not  Paul,  but  Jesus;"  and 
published  under  the  pseudonym  of  Gamaliel  Smith,  Esq. 

mi  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  liv. 


598  THE     MONOGENISTS     AND 

the  Doctor  and  myself  for  open  statement  of  our  common  ethnologi- 
cal opinions:  and  it  is,  truly,  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  literary  pro- 
bity manifested — by  every  theologer  who  may  have  experienced  some 
cutis  anserina  whilst  perusing  "Types  of  Mankind" — which  has  not 
merely  prevented  any  one  of  them  from  honestly  mentioning  where  he 
learned  that  Chev.  Lepsius563  "proclaimed"  his  now  very  unbiassed 
sentiments  on  "the  doctrine  of  the  Unity  of  the  Human  Race,"  — 
but  which  has  been  unable  to  impede  Dr.  Nbtt  and  myself  from 
responding  to  the  wide  and  loud  calls  [see  Alphabetical  List  of  Sub- 
scribers, infra]  for  another  and  a  stronger  book,  through  the  same 
Publishers,  announced  as  the  Earth's  "Indigenous  Races." 

The  subjoined  remarks,  by  our  ever-valued  colleague  Mr.  Luke 
Burke,564  have  already  put  a  direct  question  to  any  man  who  volun- 
tarily adventures  into  the  ethnological  arena  after  this  year  of  our 
XlXth  century:  whilst  "old,  and  musty"  Terence565  supplies  me 
with  all  I  need  repeat  in  the  premises  • — 

"Si  mihi  pergit  quae  Tult  dicere,  ea  quse  non  vult  audiet." 


There  still  remains,  in  order  to  group  together  all  the  preceding 
arguments  into  a  "corps  de  doctrine,"  the  very  subject  which  sug- 
gested my  epigraph  to  this  chapter,  viz.,  "the  monogenists  and  the 
polygenists."  What  deduction  will  either  school  draw  from  the 
present  accumulation  of  facts  ?  Time  only  can  show.  For  my  own 
part,  I  have  met  with  no  reason  to  emend,  or  change,  the  position 
taken  in  the  last  course  of  lectures  delivered  in  New  Orleans,566  as 
regards  my  individual  opinions  on  the  unity  or  diversity  of  human 
origin.     It  was  the  following : 


to 


663  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  233.  Whilst  these  pages  are  being  stereotyped,  I  have  again  a 
fresh  and  welcome  proof  of  the  Chevalier's  kind  reminiscence,  through  the  reception  of  his 
most  recent  work — Uber  die  Goiter  der  Vier  Elemenle  bei  den  Agijptern,  Berlin,  4to.,  1856. 

564  "  Does  he  speak  as  a  theologian,  or  does  be  speak  as  a  man  of  science  ?  If  as  a  theo- 
logian, he  may  argue  in  peace  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  we  shall  not  care  to  disturb  him; 
but  if  he  claims  to  reason  as  a  scientific  man,  then  we  expect  that  he  shall  submit  to  the 
laws  of  science ;  then  we  consider  ourselves  privileged  to  judge  him  by  the  rules  of  common 
sense.  Then  he  must  be  reminded  that  those  who  live  in  glass  houses  ought  not  to  throw 
stones,  and  that  those  who  use  theology  to  pinion  scientific  men  within  hopeless  dilemmas, 
may  find  in  the  end  that  it  is  less  difficult  than  they  supposed  to  turn  the  tables  upon  them- 
selves ;  for  assuredly,  if  scientific  men  were  only  to  rouse  themselves  to  the  same  zeal  and 
love  of  conquest  which  animate  theologians,  there  would  soon  rain  down  upon  theology 
such  a  pitiless  storm,  as  would  require  stronger  brains  to  weather  than  any  we  have  at  the 
present  day  to  contend  with." —  Charleston  Medical  Journal  and  Review,  Charleston,  S.  C, 
July,  1856,  X,  No.  4,  Art.  I,  "Strictures,"  p.  444. 

665  Ter.,  Andr.,  V.  iv.,  17. 

we  On  "  Ethnology— Egypt's  testimony"— 9th  lecture  (of  15)  delivered  before  the  Lyceum 
of  the  Second  Municipality,  Feb.  20,  1852:  —  New  Orleans  "Daily  Crescent,"  Feb.  21. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  599 

"  Some  years  of  association  with  Dr.  Morton  [since  1852  confirmed 
"  by  almost-constant  investigation  of  the  problem  for  myself]  have 
"  gradually  led  me  to  the  conviction : — 

"  1st,  that  every  argument  hitherto  brought  forward  on  the  unity- 
"  side  is  either  refuted  or  refutable  ;  but  that, 

"  2d,  whilst  the  reasonings  in  favor  of  the  diversity-view  preponde- 
"  rate  greatly  over  those  against  it,  I  do  not,  nevertheless,  hold  the 
"  latter  to  be,  as  yet,  absolutely  proven. 

"  Lest  such  assertion  should  appear  paradoxical,  I  would  explain, 
" — that  the  proofs  of  diversity  are  chiefly  of  a  negative  character; 
"and,  on  the  other  hand,  these  questions  being  still  'sub  judice,' 
"  some  discovery  in  science,  now  unforeseen,  may  hereafter  establish 
"  unity  upon  a  certain  basis." 

It  is  not,  however  [as  the  reader  of  our  last  work  can  well  under- 
stand], from  any  submissiveness  towards  dictates  emanating  from 
the  theocratical  point  of  view,  that  I  consider  the  dogmatic  argument 
to  stand,  down  to  the  present  moment  and  in  all  the  works  known 
to  me,  among  those  propositions  hitherto  unrefuted.  Want  of  space 
alone567  prevented  further  publication,  of  MSS.  which  covered  bibli- 
cal ethnology,  on  that  occasion ;  and  the  arrangement  of  the  several 
chapters  of  this  volume  has  equally  precluded  (save  in  respect  to 
Acts)  continuance  of  scriptural  branches  of  inquiry  on  the  present. 
in  the  interim,  during  more  recent  studies  in  Europe,  I  have  been 
enabled  to  collect  former  desiderata  that,  some  day,  may  find  utter- 
ance in  matured  shape ;  when  asseverations  in  support  of  monoge- 
nism,  grounded  upon  the  Textus  receptus  whether  of  Old  or  New 
Testaments,  shall  be  critically  examined. 

Persevering  consistently  to  the  end  in  that  method  of  quotation 
previously  announced  [supra,  p.  403],  it  is  with  three  extracts  from 
works  of  our  living  contemporaries  that  I  submit,  to  others,  the 
thoughts  and  ideas  in  which  I  participate,  couched  in  language  far 
superior  to  that  through  which  I  might  have  endeavored  to  express 
them.  They  are  emanations  of  the  French  mind  in  our  pending 
age;  each  differing  from  the  two  others  as  concerns  the  subject 
whence  it  takes  its  point  of  departure,  but  all  uniting  in  grandeur 
of  sentiment,  eloquence  of  diction,  and  truthfulness  of  utterance. 

"  Strange  destiny  that  of  theology !  That  of  being  condemned 
never  to  attach  herself  except  to  systems  which  are  already  crumbling 
down :  that  of  being,  through  her  essence,  the  enemy  of  every  new 
science  and  to  all  progress.  Yes, — she  foresaw  that  a  day  would  come 
to  dethrone  her, — this  theology,  this  sacerdotal  science- — when,  during 

<*'  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  G26-7. 


600  THE    MONOGENISTS    AND 

paganism,  she  sought  to  frighten  humanity  by  the  myth  of  Prome- 
theus. She  struggled  to  depict,  with  the  colors  of  impiety,  the  man  who 
was  going  to  demand  of  Nature  its  secrets  and  its  laws;  and  she 
manacled  him  beforehand  to  a  rock:  but  time,  far  from  riveting  the 
chain,  has  been  unceasingly  detaching  it.  The  spread  of  man's 
discoveries,  the  importance  of  his  victories,  compel  evermore  the 
public  conscience  to  admire,  as  a  noble  independence,  as  a  courage- 
ous effort,  that  which  theology  wished  not  to  regard  but  as  a  haughty 
attempt  that  the  All-Powerful  had  punished  by  ill-fortunes  and 
chastisements.  We  willingly  approach,  now-a-days,  the  tree  of 
knowledge ;  and  we  no  more  believe  that  it  is  Satan  who  presents  us 
with  its  poisoned  fruits."568 

"  16.  It  is  said  that  the  telescope  of  Herschell  [that  of  Lord  Posse 
has  since  performed  mightier  wonders],  which  has  unveiled  to  us 
nebula?  before  unknown,  magnified  twelve  thousand  times.  If  a 
glass  were  made  of  sufficient  power  to  magnify  a  million  times,  the 
milky-ways  would  be  multiplied  prodigiously ;  and  would  seem  to 
us  so  crowded  together,  that  they  would  form  but  one  spherical  vault 
of  suns  shining  in  those  unknown  regions.  And  yet  all  these  suns 
are  separated  from  each  other  by  profound  deserts  of  darkness ! 
Here,  before  this  wide  circle  of  bright  bodies,  the  power  of  human 
view  must  stop :  here  must  be  the  barrier  which  shuts  from  our  vision 
the  rest  of  the  creation.     But  this  is  not  the  limit  of  the  universe. 

"  17.  Here  thought  and  language  fail  to  express  the  grandeur  of 
the  reality.  "We  can  scarcely  imagine  it  by  the  assistance  of  time 
and  space.  To  overload  the  mind  with  accumulations  of  time  and 
space,  is  still  to  prescribe  limits  to  that  which  has  none, —  in  adding 
duration  to  duration  and  extent  to  extent.  Let  us  suppose  as  many 
suns  and  worlds  as  we  have  enumerated :  in  our  transports  of  enthu- 
siasm, let  us  bound  beyond  myriads  of  spaces  a  thousand  and  a 
thousand  times  more  vast :  let  us  unite  all  those  heavens,  and  exag- 
gerate the  number  of  them  as  far  as  the  imagination  can  reach, — 
still,  beyond  this  immeasurable  portion  of  the  creation  in  which 
the  dazzled  thought  is  lost,  the  universe  continues  without  bounds 
and  without  measure. 

"  18.  Overwhelmed  by  the  majesty  of  the  universe,  human  intel- 
ligence sinks  into  a  state  of  insensibility  before  its  unfathomable 

568  Alfred  Maury,  Essai  sur  les  Legendes  Pieuses  du  Moyen-Age;  ou  Examen  de  ce  qu'elles 
renferment  de  meTveilleux,  d'apres  les  connaissances-  que  fournissent  de  nos  jours  Varcheologie, 
la  theologie,  la  philosophic  et  la  phgsiologie  medicate:  Paris,  8vo,  1843,  "Introduction,"  pp. 
xix-xx. 


THE     POLYGENISTS.  601 

depths.  Those  vast  and  inscrutable  abysses,  which  man  sees  but 
imperfectly,  are  only  a  point  in  that  infinity  of  space  where  the 
most  solid  thoughts,  the  most  profound  meditations,  and  the  science 
of  all  ages,  are  lost. 

"  19.  In  presence  of  this  grand  spectacle,  man  finds  within  him- 
self an  instructive  sentiment,  which  manifests  to  him  an  Almighty 
and  Creative  Power,  as  surely  as  his  eyes  show  him  the  light.  Then 
creation  is  explained,  its  object  is  understood.  To  feel  the  existence 
of  infinity  is  to  have  a  revelation  of  eternity, — to  contemplate 
Nature  is  to  take  pleasure  in  what  is  best, — to  study  it  is  to  seek 
the  truth, — it  is  to  take  the  path  which  leads  to  GOD, — to  recog- 
nize the  workman  in  his  work.  And  why  should  it  not  be  so,  when 
His  glory  is  written  in  the  heavens  ?  Each  sun  is  a  letter  of  His 
name,  and  His  name  is  infinite !  What  more  striking  evidence  of 
the  Divine  thought  than  that  of  the  work  which  received  and 
reflected  it?  The  universe  is  then  to  the  human  race  what  it  has 
been,  is,  and  always  will  be :  the  daily  and  eternal  instructions  of 
a  Master  who  wishes  to  show  Himself  in  the  harmonies  which  He 
has  placed  in  it:  a  magnificent  expression  of  the  inaccessible  in- 
telligence which  embraces,  possesses,  and  holds  dominion  over  all : 
a  sublime  act  of  the  Divine  understanding,  which,  in  the  eloquent 
simplicity  of  its  art,  made  use  only  of  a  single  substance  to  produce, 
at  a  single  cast,  the  grain  of  sand  which  the  wave  rolls  on  our 
shores,  and  the  spacious  continents  which  rise  from  our  globe :  an 
infinite  substance,  the  first  and  only  one  of  all  things,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  the  universal  and  immediate  means  appointed  for  the 
government  of  space,  matter,  movement,  and  life :  the  element  and 
vehicle  of  the  phenomena  perceived  by  our  organs,  susceptible  of 
exercising  the  most  delicate  functions — those  even  which  are  imper- 
ceptible to  our  senses,  imponderable  to  our  instruments,  and  yet 
able  to  break  in  pieces  worlds,  with  a  violence  incalculable,  in  the 
unbounded  employment  of  its  strength :  which  is  itself  its  own 
generating  and  preserving  principle :  which  never  creates  nor  anni- 
hilates, but  organizes  and  develops  life,  regulates  the  superabundance 
of  it  by  death,  and  thus  continues  the  untroubled  course  of  Nature: 
which  is  continually  bringing  to  perfection,  and  remains  itself 
without  change :  which  produces  the  most  varied  contrasts,  and  acts 
without  any  variation :  which  has  scattered  in  the  wide  plains  of 
infinity  thousands  of  millions  of  centres  of  movement  appropriated 
to  each  of  them,  and  reduces  them  to  one :  which  draws  from  unity 
its  inexhaustible  resources,  and  contains  them  in  unity :  in  fine, 
whose  effects  are  so  many  innumerable  combinations,  and  whose 
cause  is  unique  and  profoundly  simple.     For  one  single   matter, 


602  THE    MONOGENISTS,    ETC. 

spread  throughout  the  universe,  is  its  origin,  its  preservation,  and 
its  law."569 

"  There  seems  to  he  accordance  upon  one  point.  It  is,  that, 
alongside  of  theology,  a  new  science  is  rising  up,  viz.,  'the  science  of 
religions'  *  *  *  The  world  is  positive,  because  it  grows  old :  hut  it 
had  been  credulous,  insane ;  intoxicated  with  poetry  and  supersti- 
tion ;  in  love  with  that  Nature  which  we  now-a-days  cause  to  pass 
through  the  crucible."570 

G.  E.  GL 
Philadelphia,  February,  1857. 

669  Trastouk,  Caloric.  —  Origin,  Matter,  and  Law  of  the  Universe,  New  Orleans,  8vo,  1847, 
pp.  7-8.  "Eleve  de  l'Eeole  polytecnique"  himself,  and  a  mining-Engineer  of  high  position 
in  Mexican  and  Central  American  localities,  my  friend  M.  Trastour  understands,  as  well  as 
the  reader,  that,  absolutely  unacquainted  with  Physics,  I  have  no  opinion  whatever  upon 
an  imponderable  termed  "Caloric." 

670  V'inet,  Les  Paradis  Profanes  de  V  Occident,  Paris,  8vo,  1856,  p.  1. 


VARIOUS    GROUPS    OF    HUMANITY.  603 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SECTION"  I. 

COMMENTARY    UPON    THE    PRINCIPAL    DISTINCTIONS    OBSERVABLE 
AMONG    THE   VARIOUS   GROUPS   OF   HUMANITY. 

(  With  an  Ethnographic  Tableau.) 
BY  GEO.  R.  GLIDDON. 

Under  the  above  heading,  I  had  elaborated  a  more  diffuse  argu- 
ment, than  in  the  remaining  few  pages  of  this  volume  can  now  be 
submitted  to  the  reader.  But,  in  the  first  place,  the  preceding  chap- 
ters, by  Messrs.  Maury,  Pulszky,  Meigs,  and  Nbtt, —  independently 
of  a  good  deal  of  matter  latterly  transferred,  for  the  sake  of  giving  it 
a  more  appropriate  place,  back  into  my  own  Chapter  (V.)  —  have 
already  covered  a  vast  range  of  ethnological  inquiry ;  and,  in  the 
second,  our  Publishers  especially  enjoin  upon  me  not  to  let  this  book 
exceed  in  bulk  much  "above  600  pages,"  in  order  that  its  artistic 
appearance,  in  view  of  the  extra-thickness  caused  by  our  lithographic 
plates,  should  not  vary  greatly  from  that  of  Types  of  Mankind. 

It  being  taken  for  granted,  therefore,  that  the  reader  of  the  pre- 
sent work  —  should  he  be  interested  in  ethnology  —  is  acquainted 
with  the  contents  of  our  former  one,  I  feel  persuaded  that,  with  the 
facts  and  the  bibliographical  references  comprised  in  the  two,  if  to 
both  he  may  be  plea.sed  to  add  Morris's  tasteful  edition  (1855)  of 
Prichaed's  Natural  History  of  Man,  together  with  the  latter's  Six 
Ethnographical  Maps,  such  reader  is  fully  competent  to  make  his  own 
"Commentary"  on  the  distinctive  characteristics  of  the  various  fifty- 
four  races  of  mankind  presented  to  his  eye  in  the  annexed  Ethno- 
graphic Tableau. 

Hence  my  part  may  properly  limit  itself  to  the  continuation  of  a 
few  more  extracts,  that  generalize,  in  some  degree,  thoughts  sug- 
gested by  its  inspection. 


60<±  DISTINCTIONS     OBSERVABLE    AMONG 

"Were  it  possible,"  "wrote  the  vigorous  expunger571  of  a  dogmatical  work  which  of  erst 
tried  to  uphold,  categorically,  the  "unity  of  the  human  species" — "Were  it  possible  for  an 
individual  to  gain  access  to  a  situation  sufficiently  commanding,  and  to  be  indued  with 
optics  sufficiently  powerful,  to  take,  at  once,  a  clear  and  discriminating  survey  of  the  whole 
earth — could  he  thus  obtain  an  accurate  and  distinct  view  of  the  appearance  and  sensible 
character  of  everything  existing  on  its  surface — diversities  of  colour,  form,  dimension,  and 
motion,  with  all  other  external  properties  of  matter  —  were  such  an  event  possible,  one  of 
the  most  curious  and  interesting  objects  that  would  attract  our  spectator's  attention,  would 
be,  the  variety  discoverable  in  the  complexion  and  feature,  the  figure  and  stature  of  the  human 
race.  In  one  section  of  the  globe,  he  would  behold  a  people  lofty  and  well-proportioned, 
elegant,  and  graceful ;  and  in  another,  not  far  remote,  a  description  of  men  diminutive, 
deformed,  unsightly,  and  awkward.  Here  would  rise  to  view  a  nation  with  flowing  locks, 
a  well-arched  forehead,  straight  and  finely-modelled  limbs,  and  a  complexion  composed  of 
the  carnation  and  the  lily ;  there,  a  race  with  frizzled  hair,  clumsy  and  gibbous  extremi- 
ties, a  retreating  forehead,  and  a  skin  of  ebony.  In  one  region  he  would  be  charmed  with 
a  general  prominence  and  boldness  of  feature,  an  attractive  symmetry,  a  liveliness  of  air, 
and  a  vigor  of  expression,  in  the  human  countenance ;  while  in  another,  he  would  be  dis- 
gusted by  its  flatness,  vacancy  and  dulness,  offended  with  its  irregularity,  or  shocked  at  its 
fierceness.  Between  these  several  extremes  would  appear  a  multiplicity  of  intermediate 
gradations,  constituting  collectively  an  unbroken  chain,  and,  manifesting  at  once  the  sim- 
plicity yet  diversity  of  the  operations  of  the  Deity,  in  peopling  the  earth  with  human  inha- 
bitants." 

After  refuting,  point  by  point,  every  postulate  advanced  by  bis 
scholastic  but  unscientific  author,  and  exposing  the  sophisms  through 
which  each  is  supported,  Dr.  Caldwell  remarks  on  the  doctrine  itself: 

"  Its  principles,  if  admitted  to  their  full  extent,  would  lead  to  results  which  our  author 
would  be  himself  the  first  to  deprecate.  They  would  prove  unfriendly  in  their  operation  to 
morality  and  religion,  and  even  subversive  of  the  dignity  of  man  and  the  order  and  har- 
mony of  the  physical  world.  They  are  calculated  to  favor  a  system  of  levelling  and  con- 
solidation which  would  reduce  to  the  same  species  many  animals  that  appertain,  in  reality, 
to  different  genera.  By  their  seductive  and  pernicious  influence  we  might  be  gradually  led 
to  a  belief  in  the  original  identity  of  even  the  white  man  himself,  the  golok  [hylobates  Hoo- 
look  ?]  or  wild  man  of  the  woods,  and  the  large  Orang-outang  ;  so  apparently  inconsiderable 
are  the  shades  of  difference  between  them,  when  their  systems  are  analyzed,  and  their 
individual  features  and  limbs  attentively  compared  with  each  other.  When  examined, 
however,  and  compared  in  their  general  result,  their  dissimilarities  are  so  numerous  and 
striking,  as  to  constitute  insuperable  objections  to  such  a  monstrous  hypothesis.  We  become 
at  once  convinced  by  the  evidence  before  us,  that  differences  so  wide  and  radical,  could 
never  have  been  produced  by  the  agency  of  any  common  causes  now  in  operation  on  our 
globe ;  but  that  the  beings  marked  by  them  belong  to  races  originally  and  immutably  dis- 
tinct.    Such  precisely  is  the  case  in  relation  to  the  different  races  of  men." 

' '  It  now  remains  to  be  said,"  continues  the  profound  physiologist  Desmoulins,572  "  whether, 
in  each  of  these  races,  of  these  species,' men  were  children  of  the  earth  whereupon  history 
perceives  them  from  times  the  most  obscure ;   or,  if,  coming  in  similar  likeness  from  one 

571  Criticism  —  For  the  Portfolio  (Philadelphia,  3d  series,  vol.  iv.,  1814;  articles  1  and  4, 
pp.  8-9,  863-4) — of  "  An  Essay  on  the  causes  of  the  Variety  of  Complexion  and  Figure,  in 
the  Human  Species,  &c,  &c.  By  Samuel  Stanhope  Smith,  D.  D.  LL.  D.,  &c,  &c."  I  owe 
acquaintance  with  this  most  powerful  argument  to  the  favor  of  Mr.  George  Ord,  President  of  the 
Acad,  of  Nat.  Sciences ;  who  informs  me  that  it  was  written  in  early  life  by  one  since  eminent 
in  medical  and  ethnological  questions — the  late  Dr.  Charles  Caldwell.  These  papers  are 
an  enlargement  of  a  previous  critique  published  in  the  North  American  Review,  July,  1811. 

«2  Races  Eumaines,  1826;  pp.  155,  158. 


VARIOUS    GROUPS    OF    HUMANITY.  605 

and  the  same  native  country,  they  became  diversified  according  to  the  novelty  of  each 
climate ;  of  which  the  influence,  singly,  or  united  with  that  of  a  supposed  sidereal  revolu- 
tion, would  thus  have  transformed  children  of  one  and  the  same  father, — creating  there  some 
negroes,  here  some  Kourilians,  yonder  some  Finns,  hither  some  Mongols,  &c.  *  *  *  Races 
and  species,  everywhere  that  they  remain  pure  and  without  mixture,  preserve  invariable  all 
the  traits,  all  the  physical  characters  which  the  first  observers  saw  in  them,  and  that  they 
indubitably  possessed  from  the  very  beginning.  Their  alteration  is  everywhere  the  product 
of  intermixture,  the  fusion  between  heterogeneous  populations.  Climate  and  all  the  influ- 
ences engendered  by  it  have  alone  no  hold,  whether  upon  the  form  of  the  body  and  face,  or 
on  the  color  of  the  skin,  or  upon  that  of  the  hair  and  its  nature.  These  causes  possess  only 
a  slight  power,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  following  book,  on  the  color  of  the  skin  in  certain 
races.  In  all  these  mixtures  there  does  not  either  result  indifferently  a  mean  of  expression 
of  traits  of  each  race.     Ordinarily,  one  dominates  the  other." 

Denying,  therefore,  with  Dr.  Caldwell,  that  climatic  changes  of 
latitude  or  longitude  have  had  any  permanent  influence  upon  the 
race-character  of  the  human  skin ;  and  recognizing,  with  Desmoulins 
and  Morton,  no  known  causes  subsequent  in  action  to  the  Creator's 
coloring  of  each  race,  hut  direct  amalgamation,— otherwise  intermix- 
ture between  different  types — as  explanatory  of  the  endless  gradations 
of  color  now  beheld  in  humanity  throughout  the  world  ;  it  follows 
that,  according  to  my  conception  of  the  primitive  state  of  mankind 
in  each  zoological  province  of  creation,  the  shades  in  coloration  of 
the  skin,  eyes  and  hair,  must  have  been  less  numerous  than  appear 
at  the  present  day  after  so  many  thousand  years  of  interminglings 
and  migrations.  "What  may  have  been  the  exact  primordial,  or  ab- 
original, cuticular  color  of  each  type ;  into  how  many  or  how  few 
distinct  national  tints  they  might  be  resolved,  there  seems  to  be  (out- 
side of  the  comparatively  small  area  covered  by  the  earth's  historical 
nations),  no  means  now  of  ascertaining ;  although  some  plausible  con- 
clusions are  attainable  through  induction.  In  any  case,  the  historical 
permanence  of  many  colors  being  determined  through  monumental 
and  written  evidence  for  3000  to  4000  years,  we  may  fairly  challenge 
objectors  to  produce  evidence  that  other  unrecorded  shades  did  not 
exist  contemporaneously.  Egyptian  monuments,  Hebrew  ethnology, 
Assyrian  sculptures,  Greek  and  Roman  iconography,  Chinese  annals, 
Mexican  and  Peruvian  antiquities,  with  many  ancient  descriptions 
of  personages  or  nations,573  combine  to  establish,  in  each  geographical 
centre,  that  the  peoples  within  and  around  it  presented  the  same 
coloration  as  their  descendants  at  this  day, — all  later  variations  being 
satisfactorily  accounted  for  through  phenomena  produced  by  physical 
amalgamation  between  subsequent  intruders  and  the  primitive  stocks. 
Thus,  for  instance,  there  are  now  two  very  distinct  colors  seen  among 
the  Israelites ;  one  exceedingly  dark,  sallow,  with  black  eyes  and 
hair ;  the  other,  fair  even  to  pallor,  with  light  blue  or  hazel  eyes,  and 

5,3  All  these  positions  are  now  proved,  I  take  it,  in  the  present  volume. 


60G  DISTINCTIONS    OBSERVABLE     AMONG 

yellow  or  reddish  hair ;  notwithstanding  that,  of  all  races,  the  Jews, 
especially  in  modern  times,  have  striven  beyond  any  types  to  pre- 
serve their  blood  pure  from  all  admixture.  And  one  may  reduce  the 
counter-argument  of  some  monogenists  who,  with  Prichard,  have 
thrown  overboard  Usher's  b.  c.  4004  for  "  Creation,"  viz.,  that,  who  can 
tell  what  the  action  of  unnumbered  chiliads  of  j>re-historic  ages  may 
have  done  iu  changing  one  type  itfto  another? — to  a  simple  rule  of 
three:  If  5000  years,  as  proved  by  every  possible  testimony,  have 
done  nothing,  how  much  will  any  time  do  ? 

"Nothing,"  wrote  Quoy  and  Gaimard,5'4  the  accurate  observers  who  sailed  round  the 
world  with  Dumont  d'Urville  (1826-9),  "  better  proves  the  difficulty  that  zoology  presents, 
when  one's  object  is  to  well  characterize  a  species,  or  a  variety  of  species,  than  the  diversity 
of  human  races,  admitted  by  naturalists.  How,  indeed,  can  distinctions,  oftentimes  so 
fugacious,  become  settled  upon  solid  bases !  When,  in  correct  zoology,  one  would  determine 
a  species,  it  is  by  uniting  the  greatest  possible  number  of  individuals  that  some  certainty 
may  be  attained.  How,  then,  catch  all  those  delicate  hues  constituting  that  which  is  called 
fades,  through  notes,  drawings,  and  recollections  weakened  by  the  distances  one  has  tra- 
versed, and  by  the  absence  of  the  individuals  one  has  to  compare  ?  In  order  to  obtain  posi- 
tive results,  it  would  be,  therefore,  necessary  to  do  that  which  is,  so  to  say,  impossible ;  viz. : 
unite  a  great  number  of  individuals  of  these  varieties,  for  the  purpose  of  comparing  them 
together ;  and  to  cause  oil-portraits  to  be  made  as  perfect  likenesses,  in  order  to  indicate  the 
precise  shade  of  the  physiognomy.  This  has  not  as  yet  been  done  in  a  satisfactory  manner, 
and  any  attempt  to  do  it  would  encounter  considerable  difficulties  during  the  rapidity  of  a 
nautical  voyage." 

Many  of  the  obstacles,  deplored  thirty  years  ago  by  such  qualified 
judges,  to  collecting  an  adequate  series  of  ethnological  likenesses, 
continue  in  force  at  the  present  day ;  but  the  photographic  meliora- 
tions which  Daguerre's  wonderful  discovery  has  latterly  received, 
combined  with  the  dexterous  application  of  colored  plaster-casts  to 
the  human  bust,  have  already  removed  the  more  serious  impediments 
to  future  mechanical  exactitude.  To  Dumoutier575  unquestionably 
belongs  the  merit  of  first  practising,  on  a  large  scale,  this  method  of 
permanently  securing  faithful  copies  of  Oceanic  and  Australian  types. 
Blanchard's  comments  on  this  superb  collection  are  worthy  of  careful 
perusal. 

"  The  physiognomies,  of  the  inhabitants  of  localities  visited  by  explorers,  have  been  often 
represented,  through  the  aid  of  drawing,  in  accounts  of  voyages;  but,  in  all,  one  may  affirm 
it,  these  representations  are  imperfect.  H  there  be,  now  and  then,  any  which  approximate 
to  the  truth,  it  is,  so  to  say,  always^  impossible  to  verify  them.     The  anthropologist  can, 

574  Voyage  de  la  Corvette  V Astrolabe  ;  Zoologie,  Paris,  8vo,  1830;  I,  chap.  1,  "Del'Homme;" 
p.  15. 

"s  Voyage  de  V Astrolabe  el  de  la  Zelie ;  Alias,  Anthropologic,  Paris,  fol.,  1845—50;  Text  in 
8vo,  1854,  by  Blanchabd.  Cf.  Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  Ethnol.  de  Paris,  1847,  I,  pp.  284-5, 
289-90.  The  original  casts,  exactly  colored,  but  representing  chiefly  Melanian  and  Poly- 
nesian races,  now  adorn  the  Galerie  Anthropologique  at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes.  My  wife 
had  only  time  to  copy  the  tints  given  to  each  bust 


VARIOUS    GROUPS    OF     HUMANITY.  607 

therefore,  have  no  confidence  in  them.  He  must  renounce  their  employment  in  determining 
the  characteristics  of  races;  in  a  word,  he  cannot  utilize  them. 

"Artists  habituated  to  draw  unceasingly  the  European  type,576  are  unskilful,  in  the  greater 
number  of  cases,  in  tracing  the  portrait  and  the  true  physiognomy  of  an  American  savage, 
or  of  a  Polynesian  Islander.  They  tend  irresistibly  to  give  him,  more  or  less,  the  expression 
of  those  European  faces  which  they  are  accustomed  to  reproduce  through  the  art  of  design. 
Hence  proceed  all  those  likenesses  of  native  races,  from  different  parts  of  the  world,  that 
ordinarily  resemble  Europeans  accoutred  in  a  queer  costume,  and  besmeared  (barbouilles) 
with  yellow,  brown,  black.  M.  Dumoutier  has  better  understood  what  was  necessary  to  be 
done  in  order  to  give  an  exact  knowledge  of  the  facial  traits,  and  of  the  general  form  of 
the  head,  amongst  those  tribes  he  has  observed. 

"  In  each  locality,  he  was  at  great  pains  to  persuade  some  individuals  to  allow  themselves 
to  be  moulded  [in  plaster],  and  we  must  believe  that  he  well  knew  how  to  come  about  it. 
He  has  succeeded  in  bringing  back  a  great  number  of  casts  taken  upon  inhabitants  of  the 
majority  of  places  touched  at  by  the  corvettes  Astrolabe  and  Zelee.  M.  Dumoutier  has  thus 
gathered  a  collection  of  busts  of  the  highest  interest,  the  greater  portion  of  which  are  now 
placed  in  the  '  galerie  anthropologique  du  Museum  d'histoire  naturelle  de  Paris.'  " 

After  showing,  nevertheless,  that  material  difficulties  in  the  execu- 
tion of  casts  render  even  them  somewhat  faulty,  by  closing  the  eyes 
and  distorting  features,  —  and  recommending  that  a  daguerreotype 
should  always  accompany  each  head  —  Blanchard  again  remarks: 

"  Hitherto,  anthropological  museums  being  very  inconsiderable,  one  has  been  obliged  to 
resign  one's  self  to  comparisons  too  restricted  for  their  results  to  be  seriously  generalized. 
These  comparisons,  furthermore,  reduce  themselves  to  very  small  affairs.  At  the  scientific 
point,  it  is  not  allowable  to  dwell  upon  such  variable  impressions  of  tourists ;  and  yet,  thi6, 
even  until  now,  is  the  principal  stock  of  anthropology."5" 

576  Strolling  one  day  (April,  1849),  with  my  friend  Dr.  Boudin,  through  the  Jardin  des 
Tuilleries,  he  drew  my  attention  to  a  marble  statue,  "all  standing  naked  in  the  open  air," 
of  Apollo  (I  think) ;  "dont,"  as  he  observed,  "les  cuisses  ont  du  negre," — at  the  same  time 
that  the  upper  part  of  the  body  is  magnificent.  This  incongruity,  however,  received  expla- 
nation through  an  odd  circumstance ;  viz. :  that  the  Parisian  statuary  commissioned  to  exe- 
cute the  work, — wishing  to  save  his  own  pocket,  and  not  being  able  to  procure,  at  the  price, 
a  white  man  sufficiently  well  made-up  to  stand  for  a  "torso"  in  his  studio  —  hired  a  fine- 
looking  negro-valet,  then  at  Paris,  as  the  cheaper  alternative.  Upon  the  latter's  splendid 
bust  he  set,  indeed,  Phoebus's  sublime  head,  but ...  he  forgot  the  legs !  In  the  same  manner, 
subsequently  (Oct.,  1855),  at  the  picture-gallery  of  the  Exposition  TJniverselle,  my  well-be- 
loved cousin,  Miss  C.  J.  Gliddon,  pointed  out  to  me  a  couple  of  paintings,  by  an  English 
artist,  of  scenes  in  Spain, — for  richness  of  coloring  and  accuracy  of  costume  unsurpassable ; 
but,  spite  of  beards  or  coquettish  veils,  each  male  or  female  face  betrayed  an  English 
country-bumpkin.  Again,  I  have  seen  Chinese  colored  sketches,  of  English  officers  and  ladies 
walking  about  Macao  during  the  war  of  1841-2,  exquisitely  done  ;  save  that  their  eyes  were 
all  oblique,  while  their  "Caucasian"  features  were  lost  in  the  Sinico-Mongol.  But  for 
possession  of  my  old  comrade  M.  Prisse's  "Oriental  Album"  I  should  have  been  unable 
to  indicate  to  the  reader,  —  through  any  works  known  to  me  about  the  very  peoples  I 
know  best  —  a  faithful  likeness  of  an  Arab ;  and  even  this  falls  short  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  all,  viz.,  the  portrait  of  the  glorious  and  ill-starred  Abdallah-ebn-Soohood,  Prince  of  the 
heroic  Wah'abees  (Mengin,  I'Sgypte  sous  le  Gouv.  de  Mohammed  Aly,  Paris,  1823,  II,  p.  142). 
The  octavo  text  I  happen  to  have ;  but  the  folio  Atlas  lies  still  with  my  library —  and  other 
things — somewhere  in  Egypt.  So  much  in  confirmation  of  M.  Pulszky's  four  propositions 
[supra,  pp.  96-97]. 
577  Op.  cit.,  pp.  7-8,  47. 


608  DISTINCTIONS    OBSERVABLE     AMONG 

If  such  are  the  lamentations  of  an  ethnologist  in  the  centre  of 
science,  at  Paris,  how  unreasonable  it  would  be  to  expect  ampler 
collections  of  iconographic  materials,  illustrative  of  human  types, 
elsewbere  ? 

The  iconoplastic  inspiration  of  Dumoutier  has  been  since  applied, 
by  M.  de  Froberville,678  with  increased  accuracy  as  regards  colora- 
tion, to  African  races  at  Bourbon  and  Mauritius.  Of  sixty  beautiful 
casts,  representing  an  astonishing  variety  of  Mozambique  negroes,  I 
was  favored  by  this  learned  ethnologist  with  a  sight  of  several ;  and 
I  am  free  to  state  that  they  opened  a  new  world  of  light  to  me  as 
regards  African  populations  on  the  eastern  coast.  Unfortunately 
these  fac-similes  are  still  inedited.  On  the  other  hand,  plaster- 
moulding  inevitably  effaces  the  expression  of  the  eye ; 679  but  this 
defect  can  now  be  counterbalanced  through  photography ;  nowhere 
employed  with  such  thorough  appreciation  of  anthropological  exi- 
genda  as  by  MM.  Deveria,  Rousseau,  and  Jacquart,  at  the  Mu- 
seum d'Histoire  Naturelle.  Compared  to  this  Gallery, — save  only  the 
department  of  craniology,  in  which  it  is  surpassed  by  the  Mortonian 
collection  at  Philadelphia580 — all  other  collections  known  to  my  per- 
sonal observation,  or  through  report,  sink  into  insignificance.  Ske- 
letons, skulls,  anatomical  preparations ;  casts  of  entire  figures,  busts, 
and  heads,  colored  and  uncolored,  of  an  immense  number  of  nations ; 
oil  and  water-colored  portraits,  daguerreotypes,  photographs,  of  indi- 
viduals from  all  parts  of  the  world ;  not  forgetting  those  exquisite 
colored  models  of  Russian  races,  presented  by  Prince  Dernidoff, — all 
these,  and  other  items  by  far  too  various  for  emimeration,  already 
render  the  G-alerie  Anthropologique  (as  might  have  been  inferred 
where  French  science  directs)  one  of  the  glories  of  Paris,  no  less 
than  foremost  in  the  world's  ethnology.  In  fact,  such  an  admirable 
system  has  there  been  laid  down,  susceptible  of  indefinite  expansion, 
that  with  very  trifling  aid  from  the  imperial  government,  Paris  might 
contain,  amidst  her  thousand  attractions  to  the  student,  as  well  as  to 

578  "Rapport  sur  les  races  negres  de  lAfrique  orientale  an  sud  de  FiSquateur,  observers 
par  M.  de  Feoberville — Comptes  rendus  des  seances  de  V  Academic  des  Sciences,  xxx,  3  Juin, 
1850 — "tirage  a,  part"  14  pages:  —  and  Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  Ethnol.  de  Paris,  1846;  i.  pp. 
89-90 ;  and  elsewhere  in  the  Bulletins  de  la  Soc.  de  Geographic 

This  gentleman  told  me  that  the  method  he  had  employed  was,  to  gum  square  bits  of  paper 
on  the  skin  of  each  individual  whose  cast  he  had  previously  taken,  and  then  to  cause  his 
artist  to  color  them  until  the  hue  disappeared  in  that  of  the  "  torso"  himself.  Transferring 
thence  this  colored  paper  to  the  plaster-cast,  the  same  process  yielded  a  perfect  copy  of  such 
person's  cuticular  coloration. 

579  See  an  example  in  M.  DAvezac's  "  Y^bou,"  exquisitely  moulded  though  it  was  by  the 
care  of  De  Blainville,  in  our  "Ethnographic  Tableau,"  No.  27. 

580  There  are,  however,  admirable  materials,  forming  the  nucleus  of  what  might  become  a 
great  anthropological  museum,  in  the  London  Royal  College  of  Surgeons. 


VARIOUS    GROUPS     OF    HUMANITY.  609 

persons  of  education  and  leisure,  every  desideratum  in  anthropology. 
An  appropriation  of  not  more  than  100,000  francs  to  the  Galerie 
Anthropologique,  coupled  with  official  instructions  to  her  consuls, 
chiefs  of  expeditions,  governors,  and  naval  commanders,  scattered 
over  the  world,  to  collect — at  national  expense — colored  photographs 
(front,  back,  and  profile)  of  all  types  of  man,  male  and  female,  within 
their  several  reach, — and  executed  upon  an  uniform  scale,  according 
to  rules  for  measurements,  &c,  such  as  none  but  French  administrative 
experiences  know  so  well  how  to  give — these  two  ordinances,  "pure 
and  simple,"  are,  now,  all  that  is  required  to  make  France,  within 
five  or  ten  years,  as  supreme  in  ethnology  as  she  is  in  every  other 
science.  No  other  government  in  the  world  will  perform  this  service 
towards  the  study  of  man  ;  because  the  two  or  three  others  (that  may 
have  the  power)  do  not  possess,  amid  the  personnel  of  their  Execu- 
tives, men  of  education  sufficiently  refined  to  appreciate  "  ethno- 
logy"— its  true  political  value,  or  its  eventual  humanitarian  influences. 
To  such  Cabinets,  of  cast-iron  mould,  appeal  is  useless,  owing  to  their 
intellectual  conditions;  to  others,  like  cultivated  Sardinia  for  instance, 
its  achievement  would  be  almost  impossible.  If  imperial  centraliza- 
tion in  France  does  not  accomplish  for  Mankind  that  which  has  been 
done  everywhere  in  behalf  of  beetles,  snakes,  bats,  and  tadpoles,  gene- 
rations must  yet  pass  away  before,  through  any  amount  of  private 
enterprise,  those  materials  can  be  collected,  in  one  spot,  that  might 
afford  a  comprehensive  insight  into  this  planet's  human  occupants. 

Such  are  the  disheartening  convictions  which  general  experience, 
gathered  eastward  and  westward  during  former  years,  followed  by 
some  five  exclusively  devoted  to  ethnological  inquiries,  have  forced 
upon  me  involuntarily.  Mortifying  to  my  aspirations  as  the  acknow- 
ledgment may  be,  a  brief  sketch  of  the  precursory  steps  taken  to 
accomplish  our  "Ethnographic  Tableau,"  such  as  it  is,  will  be  the 
best  comment  upon  its  difficulties  of  realization. 

It  was  my  conception,  when  setting  out  for  Europe,  with  the 
object  of  gathering  materials  for  the  present  volume,  to  prepare  a 
Map  of  the  world,  colored  somewhat  upon  the  plan  of  Prof.  Agas- 
siz's  suggestion,581  in  size  of  about  four  folio  sheets ;  containing  the 
most  exact  colored  -portraits  of  races  procurable,  drawn  to  an  uniform 
scale,  and  each  placed  geographically  in  situ.  Copiously  supplied, 
beyond  any  others  in  this  country,  as  is  our  Academy  of  Natural 
Sciences  with  works  upon  every  department  of  Natural  History, 
and  among  them  many  containing  excellent  human  iconographic 
specimens,  they  were  wholly  inadequate   to   the  execution  of  my 


581 


Types  of  Mankind,  p.  lxxviii,  and  Map. 


610  DISTINCTIONS     OBSERVABLE     AMONG 

plan :  but  I  supposed  that  European  libraries  migbt  easily  make  up 
the  deficiency.  Procuring  a  large  skeleton  chart,  and  coloring  it 
into  zoological  realms  and  fauna?,  I  made  a  preliminary  list  of  about 
150  human  families  whose  likenesses  were  desirable.  Their  names, 
written  on  differently-colored  pieces  of  paper,  an  inch  square,  were 
then  pasted  upon  this  map,  each  one  in  its  geographical  locality,  to 
stand  as  mnemonics  for  the  portraits  to  be  afterwards  inserted. 
Through  the  politeness  of  the  late  M.  Ducos,  Minister  for  ISTaval 
Affairs,  the  choice  library  of  the  Ministere  de  la  Marine,  together 
with  the  vast  repository  of  the  Depot  de  la  Marine,  were  freely 
opened  to  my  visits ;  and  here,  Bajot  583  in  hand,  my  bibliographical 
explorations  commenced.  The  Bibliothlques  Imperiale,  de  I'Institut, 
and  du  Jardin  des  Plantes,  were  equally  accessible  through  the  kind- 
ness of  friends,  during  eight  months'  stay  at  Paris ;  and,  for  eight 
months  subsequently,  I  resumed  my  old  seat  in  that  paradise  of  a 
bibliophilos,  owing  to  the  incomparable  facilities  readers  obtain 
there,  the  British  Museum  Library.  Altogether  I  worked  in  the 
midst  of  such  resources  for  about  twelve  months  of  time,  —  always 
aided,  when  necessary,  by  my  "Wife's  enthusiastic  help — guided 
throughout  by  considerate  indices  from  distinguished  savans ;  during 
which  period  thousands  of  volumes  were  subjected  to  scrutiny,  hun- 
dreds yielding  materials  either  for  my  wife's  pencil  or  my  own  note- 
books. In  fact,  no  literary  means  were  lacking  for  the  attainment 
of  my  object;  no  efforts  spared  towards  realizing  it.  Having,  in 
consequence,  acquired  practical  knowledge  of  the  probable  range  of 
ethnographic  materials  accumulated  at  the  present  day,  I  can  now 
speak  of  their  deficiencies  with  more  confidence.  Alas !  they  are 
great  indeed ! 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before  my  casting  about,  at  Paris,  ended 
in  the  renunciation  of  an  ethnographic  map  of  the  nature  above 
sketched ;  owing  to  the  frequency  of  lacunae,  impossible  to  be  filled 
up,  in  the  pictorial  gradations  of  humanity  spread  over  the  earth. 
Inaccurate  designs  of  many  races,  false  colorations  of  most,  un- 
authentic exceptions  to  exactness  throughout  the  remainder,  reduced 
the  number  of  reliable  portraits  to  a  very  small  number  in  published 
works.  To  the  ethnographer  some  otherwise  valuable  books,  perfect 
as  to  costumes  of  nations,  are  wholly  unavailable663  as  regards  facial 

682  Catalogue  particulier  des  Livres  de  Ge'ographie  ei  de  Voyages  qui  se  irouvent  dans  les 
Biblioihiques  du  Department  de  la  Marine  et  des  Colonies;  Paris,  Imprimerie  Royale,  8vo, 
1840;  vol.  III. 

633  Such,  for  instance,  as  Georgi's  Beschreibung  aller  Nationum  des  Russichen  Reiehs,  St. 
Petersburg,  1776;  also  republished  in  smaller  edition  at  Leipzig,  1783;  and  in  four  vols. 
London,  without  plates,  1780: — Reckbbekg,  Les  Peuplcs  de  la  Russie,  &c,  with  94  plates 


VABIOUS    GROUPS    OF     HUMANITY.  611 

iconography,  —  the  Artists,  naturally  ignorant  of  physiognomical 
diversity  beyond  the  small  circle  of  races  within  their  personal 
cognizances,  having  given  European  features  to  every  variety  of 
man ;  so  that,  according  to  each  designer's  country,  all  nations  are 
made  to  assume  French,  English,  or  German  faces;  often  with  as 
little  regard  to  foreign  human  nature  as  we  find  in  Tailors'  or 
Modistes'  show-plates  of  the  newest  fashions !  Some  of  the  best 
descriptive  works  contain  plates  too  small  for  reliance ;  in  general 
uncolored,  or  else  tinted  without  regard  to  exactness;  at  the  same 
time  that  of  whole  families  of  mankind  there  are  no  representations 
whatever.  It  is,  in  fact,  rare  to  meet  with  colored  plates  of  races 
worthy  of  confidence,  before  the  beginning  of  this  century :  not  that 
I  would  disparage  the  efforts  made  by  Cook,  La  Perouse,  Krusenstern, 
and  other  voyagers,  to  furnish  good  copper-plates  of  several  distant 
tribes  of  men  met  with  in  their  daring  circumnavigations. 

But  the  man  essentially  imbued  with  a  sort  of  instinctive  presenti- 
ment of  the  importance  of  human  iconography,  and  to  whose  single 
pencil  we  still  owe  more  varied  representations  of  mankind  over  the 
earth  than  to  any  individual  before  or  since,  without  question  was 
Choris.584  Chosen  artist  to  the  second  Russian  voyage  round  the 
world  under  Ottoe  von  Kotzebue  in  the  "R.urick"585  — 1815-18 — 
favored  by  a  liberal  and  scientific  commander,  and  aided  by  a  skilful 
naturalist,  Adelbert  de  Chamisso,  Choris  really  availed  himself  of  glo- 
rious opportunities  (so  frequently  deemed  unimportant  in  later  mari- 
time expeditions,  —  compared  to  the  triumphant  collection  of  "new 
species  "  among  oysters,  butterflies,  or  parsleys),  and  may  be  right- 
fully styled  the  father  of  those  ethnological  portrait-painters  who, 
like  Lesueur,  have  so  skilfully  illustrated  the  voyages  of  Peron  (under 
Baudin)  Duperrey,  De  Freycinet,  D'Urville,  Gaimard,  and  others. 
It  is  to  Choris's,  more  than  to  any  other  man's  labors,  that  the  works 
of  Prichard,  and  Cuvier,  as  the  learned  copyists  frequently  point  out, 
owe  their  iconographic  interest :  and  here  it  may  be  conveniently 
stated  that,  in  our  Tableau,  I  have  endeavored,  as  far  as  possible,  to 

of  costumes.  Many  other  works,  equally  defective  ethnographically,  if  excellent  for  na- 
tional costumes,  are  in  the  "King's  Library,"  British  Museum.  Even  some  works  of  the 
great  French  Navigators — -such  as  D'Entrecastraux,  1800;  De  Bougainville,  1837; 
Laplace,  1835;  Du  Petit  Thuars,  1841 — are  almost  valueless  to  human  iconography, 
however  meritorious  and  important  in  descriptions,  and  precious  in  other  branches  of 
natural  history. 

584  Voyage  Pittoresque  autour  du  Monde,  avec  des  Portraits  de  Sauvages  d 'Amerique,  d'Asie, 
aVAfrique,  et  des  lies  du  Grand  Ocean;  Paris,  Didot,  folio,  1822.  Of  this  work  I  have  used 
four  copies  at  diiferent  libraries,  two  of  them  uncolored :  and,  as  regards  the  coloration  of 
the  other  two,  one  varied  materially  from  the  other  in  tints. 

685  Yoyage  of  discovery  into  the  South  Sea,  &c,  transl.  Lloyd,  London,  3  vols.  8vo.,  1821. 


612  DISTINCTIONS    OBSEKYABLE     AMONG 

avoid  repeating  likenesses  published  by  either  authority,  except  when 
none  so  good  were  accessible  elsewhere.  Even  then,  in  most  cases, 
my  copies  are  taken  from,  or  have  been  compared  with  the  original 
engravings,  as  the  reference  under  each  head  indicates. 

Compelled  to  relinquish,  owing  to  absence  of  sufficient  materials, 
my  first  idea  of  an  ethnographic  map,  the  next  best  substitute  was 
suggested  by  J.  Achille  Compte's  folio  sheet ;  ^  which,  considering 
that  it  is  now  twenty-five  years  old,  was  the  ablest  condensation  of 
its  day.  Its  errors  have  been  indicated  by  Jacquinot;  and,  besides  it 
gives  undue  preponderance  to  Oceanic  types  when  other  parts  of  the 
world  possess  equal  claims  for  representation.  "  One  sees  a  black 
of  Vanikoro  drawn  as  the  type  of  the  Polynesian  brown  race  ;  below 
it,  another  native  of  Vanikoro  represents  the  Malay  branch.  Natives 
of  New-Ireland  serve  at  one  and  the  same  time  for  the  type  of  the 
Polynesian  race  and  for  the  black  Oceanic  race  I"597  Without  copy- 
ing any  of  the  heads  published  by  so  good  an  authority,  I  have  in 
part  availed  myself  of  Compte's  columnar  arrangement  and  nomen- 
clature, in  the  third  letter-press  column  of  our  Tableau. 

Among  the  various  desiderata  towards  exactness  in  ethnic  icono- 
graphy, rank  two  necessities:  —  1st,  that  the  same  portrait  should  at 
least  be  photographed  both  in  front  view  and  -profile;  2d,  that  these 
photographs  should  not  be  restricted  to  the  male  sex,  but  that  their 
females  should  always  accompany  them ;  inasmuch  as,  from  the  rape 
of  the  Sabines  down  to  Captain  Bligh's  mutineers, —  among  Turks 
universally,  as  well  as  in  instances  of  American  nations  cited  by  Mc- 
Culloh588 — the  women  of  a  given  nation  often  differ  totally  in  type 
from  their  masculine  possessors.  Of  this  last  contingency  there  exist 
countless  instances,  met  with  even  in  our  own  every-day  experiences. 
The  advantage  of  adding  a  back  view  of  each  individual  has  been 
shown  by  Debret  ;m  and  it  is  the  rule  followed,  where  possible,  by 
M.  Rousseau.590  One  universal  savant,591  and  one  equally-universal 
comparative  anatomist,592  feel  the  importance  of  the  first  requirement. 

586  Races  Humaines,  distributes  en  un  Tableau  Me'thodique,  "adopts  par  le  Conseil  royal  de 
l'lnstruction  Publique;"  Paris,  1840: — being  PI.  I.  of  his  Regne  Animal,  1832. 

587  Jacquinot,  Eludes  sur  VHistoire  Naturelle  de  V Homme ;  These  pour  le  Doctorat  en  Me- 
dicine, Paris,  4to.,  1848;  p.  117. 

588  Researches,  Philosophical  and  Antiquarian,  concerning  the  Aboriginal  History  of  America, 
Baltimore,  8vo.,  1829;  pp.  34-5,  &c.  See  a  spirited  sketch  of  the,  rape  of  a  white  woman, 
by  "Pehuenches,"  in  Po3ppig's  Reise  in  Chili,  &c,  Atlas  fol.,  1835,  PI.  7. 

589  Voyage  Piltoresque  au  Bresil,  ii.  pp.  114-5,  PI.  xii. 

590  At  the  Jardin  des  Plantes;  as  in  several  photographs  of  Hottentots,  &c,  I  owe  to  his 
complaisance. 

591  Alfred  Maury,  Questions  relatives  <2  V Ethnologic,  ancienne  de  la  France — Extrait  de  l'An- 
nuaire  de  la  Soc.  Imp.  des  Antiquaires  de  France  pour  1852 — Paris,  18mo.,  1853  ;  pp.  9-10. 

592  Straus-Durckheim,  Theohgie  de  la  Nature,  Paris,  8vo.,  1852;  III,  note  xxx,  Races 
humaines ;  pp.  318-9,  324. 


VARIOUS     GROUPS    OF    HUMANITY.  613 

The  former  presses  French  antiquaries  with  the  following  language 
— "  In  the  portraits  that  we  demand  from  our  correspondents,  they 
should  adhere  both  to  giving  front  views,  so  as  to  enable  the  physi- 
ognomy to  be  judged;  and  profile,  in  order  to  show  the  direction  of 
the  lines  of  the  face,  the  disposal  of  the  forehead,  the  facial  angle, 
the  degree  of  hollowness  of  the  eye  in  relation  to  the  'arcade  souci- 
liere,'  the  prominence  of  the  chin.  It  is  certain  that  these  details  of 
the  countenance,  in  appearance  insignificant,  exert  a  great  influence 
upon  the  ensemble  of  the  features.  By  way  of  example,  we  would 
instigate  remark  that  the  cavity  at  the  root  of  the  nose,  in  relation  to 
the  slope  of  the  forehead,  is  of  itself  a  characteristic  that  distinguishes 
certain  races  from  others.  The  Greeks,  to  judge  by  the  statues  they 
have  left  us,  did  not  represent  this  cavity;  so  pronounced,  on  the 
contrary,  in  sundry  of  our  own  provinces.  Some  physiologists  have 
attributed  this  character  to  mixture  with  the  Germanic  race,  in  which 
it  is  observed  in  considerably  high  degree.  There  are  lines,  even 
some  simple  wrinkles,  that  stamp  a  given  physiognomy  with  its 
national  impress.  The  Shlavic  race  notably  distinguishes  itself,  ordi- 
narily, among  men  more  than  thirty  years  old,  by  a  furrow  which 
cuts  the  whole  cheek  in  a  quasi-vertical  sense." 

The  subjoined  authority  stands  so  high  among  comparative  anato- 
mists, that  its  weight,  in  support  of  the  polygenistic  view,  deserves 
attention.  Straus-Durckheim  says:  "  In  treating  this  subject  [Human 
Races],  as  it  ought  to  be,  simply  as  a  question  of  pure  zoology,  and 
upon  applying  to  it  the  same  principles  as  to  the  determination  of 
other  species  of  animals  belonging  to  one  genus,  one  arrives,  in  fact, 
at  really  recognizing  rnauy  very  distinct  human  species,  of  which 
the  number  cannot  yet  be  fixed ;  on  one  account,  because  the  interior 
of  the  continents  of  Africa,  Australia,  and  even  of  America,  is  not 
sufficiently  known ;  and  on  another,  that  we  do  not  possess  even 
sufficient  data  about  the  distinctive  characters  of  a  large  number 
already  known 

"We  are  acquainted  indeed  with  a  few  races,  such  as  the  Caucasian  and  the  Negro;  but 
many  others  are  very  poorly  indicated,  even  by  Ethnographers,  to  such  a  degree  that  every- 
thing remains  still  to  be  done. 

"  The  greater  number  of  travellers  who,  until  now,  have  gone  over  distant  countries  in 
which  exist  races  of  men  more  or  less  distinct,  have  indeed  brought  back  some  drawings ; 
and,  in  these  later  times,  even  busts  moulded  upon  nature ;  but  more  frequently  they  have 
confined  themselves  to  giving  the  portraits  of  the  Chiefs  about  whom  they  spoke  in  relating 
their  voyages ;  or  else,  they  have  represented  a  few  common  individuals,  some  taken  at 
random,  and  the  others  on  account  of  whatever  may  have  been  extraordinary  in  their  phy- 
siognomy; whereas  it  is  precisely  the  portraits  of  those  who  present  the  most  vulgar  [or 
normal]  faces  and  forms  among  each  people  which  it  is  essential  to  make  known ;  their 
features  oifering,  through  this  very  circumstance,  the  true  characteristics  of  their  races, 
inasmuch  as  best  resembling  the  greater  number  of  individuals.  *  *  *  "  Now,  these  various 


614  DISTINCTIONS    OBSERVABLE    AMONG 

directions  of  the  divers  parts  of  the  head,  -which  it  would  be  so  important  to  know  well  in 
order  to  determine  the  differences  that  exist  between  human  species,  cannot  be  thoroughly 
indicated  except  in  portraits  done  exactly  in  profile ;  in  the  same  manner  that  the  exact 
proportions  of  width  cannot  be  properly  given  save  through  portraits  in  full  front  view ; 
and  this  is  precisely  that  which  one  does  not  find  but  very  exceptionally  in  ethnographio 
works,  in  which  heads  are  generally  represented  at  three-quarter  view ;  with  the  intention 
of  making  known  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  proportions  of  all  parts,  whereas  through 
sach  arrangement  they  satisfy  nothing ;  the  three-quarters  not  permitting  any  proportion 
to  be  exactly  caught,  every  feature  becoming  foreshortened  to  the  beholder." 

With  full  consciousness  of  these  requirements,  I  had  hoped  that, 
through  the  multitude  of  works  consulted,  some  kind  of  uniformity, 
as  regards  front  and  profile  views  of  the  same  head,  might  have  been 
achieved  for  a  certain  number  of  races.  Here  again  disappointment 
was  the  issue.  Aside  from  Dumoutier's  Anthropologic  wherein  chiefly 
Oceanic  busts  are  thus  figured,  there  are  not  a  dozen  instances593 
where  pains  have  been  taken  to  supply  this  radical  necessity  in  eth- 
nology. There  are  not,  out  of  these,  more  than  half  the  number 
colored;  nor,  finally,  as  illustrative  of  the  poverty  of  ethnographical 
resources,  out  of  a  collection  of  some  400  heads  of  races  procured, 
was  it  possible,  on  reducing  the  number  even  to  54  specimens,  to 
avoid  including  some  faces  (such  as  ISTos.  11, 13,  20,  30,  34,  &c.)  drawn 
at  three-quarters,  under  the  penalty  of  either  a  blank  in  the  series  or 
of  filling  the  place  with  a  less  characteristic  sample.  And  yet,  with 
an  intrepidity  which  ignorance  of  these  simple  facts  may  explain,  but 
can  never  justify,  whole  volumes  have  been  written  to  prove  "the 
unity  of  the  human  species," — when  science  does  not  possess  half  the 
requisite  materials  for  ethnographic  comparisons,  and  at  the  very 
day  that  the  best  naturalists  will  frankly  and  honestly  tell  you  how, 
t he  historical  evidences  (only  scientific  criteria)  of  permanency  of  type 
being  excluded,  they  feel  rather  uncertain  where  "species"  is  to  be 
found  in  any  department  of  zoology.  Polygenism  no  less  than 
monogenism,  as  regards  humanity's  origination,  depends,  therefore, 
like  all  similar  zoological  questions,  upon  history — itself  a  science 
essentially  human.  The  whole  controversy  concerning  the  unity  or 
the  diversity  of  mankind's  "species"  is  consequently  bounded  by  a 
circle,  of  which,  after  all,  human  history  can  but  vaguely  indicate  the 
circumference;  and  the  only  ultimate  result  obtained  from  the  an- 
alysis of  such  arguments  resolves  itself,  as  in  all  circular  arguments, 
into  a  question  of  probabilities.  The  brothers  Humboldt  (ubi  supra) 
reject,  as  ante-historical,  all  myths,  fiction,  and  tradition,  that  pretend 
to  explain  the  origin  of  mankind.     Perfectly  coinciding  with  these 

593  My  portfolio  embraces  them  all,  I  believe,  from  the  publications  of  Cuvier,  Pe"ron, 
D'Orbigny,  D'Avezac,  De  Middendorf,  Siebold,  and  two  or  three  others. 


VARIOUS    GROUPS    OF    HUMANITY.  615 

luminaries  of  our  XlXth  century  in  such  repudiation  of  the  only 
criterion  of  "species"  which  real  history  is  powerless  to  elucidate, 
belief  and  unbelief,  as  to  polygenism  or  monogenism,  seem  to  me 
equally  speculative,  equally  abortive,  in  a  matter  utterly  beyond 
the  research  of  human  history, —  as  this  term  is  understood  during 
the  present  solar  revolution,  ecclesiastically  styled  a.  d.  1857. 

I  roughly  estimate  the  amount  of  iconographic  stock,  available  to 
ethnology  and  contained  in  published  works,  at  about  600  portraits. 
Of  these  not  more  than  half  are  colored,  many  of  them  not  reliably ; 
whilst  a  large  proportion  of  those  uncolored  are  more  or  less  defec- 
•tive.  In  this  estimate,  European  nations  of  the  three  types, — Teutonic, 
Celtic  and  Sclavonic — are  of  course  excluded ;  because  biographical, 
historical  and  other  publications,  aside  from  portrait-galleries,  furnish 
abundance  to  illustrate  these  the  most  civilized  races  of  the  world. 
Some  American,  portions  of  African,  perhaps  all  the  Australian,  the 
greater  number  of  Polynesian,  certain  Malayan,  Indo-Chinese, 
Chinese,  Japanese,  &c,  are  well  represented  ;  but  vast  iconographic 
blanks  in  the  varied  nationalities  of  Asia  and  Africa  still  remain 
among  "terras  incognitse,"  ethnologically  speaking  far  more  than 
even  geographically.  For  instance,  where  has  there  been  published 
a  reliable  colored  portrait  of  a  Yukag'ir  ?  where  that  of  a  true  Berber  fmi 
Central  Arabian  tribes  have  no  authentic  representative,  save  in  the 
likeness  of  Abd- Allah  ebn  Souhood,  the  Wah'abee  ;595  and  so  on  of  whole 
nations  in  other  regions.  Indeed,  by  way  of  testing  the  accuracy  of 
this  statement,  let  the  reader  take  the  third  column  of  our  "Tableau," 
wherein  an  attempt  has  been  made,  chiefly  through  descriptions,  to 
group  mankind  physiologically.  Sixty-five  distinguishable  families, 
out  of  perhaps  hundreds  unmentioned,  are  there  enumerated.  Let 
him  only  try  to  find  for  each  of  these  a  reliable  colored  portrait,  suit- 
able to  ethnology  (Hamilton  Smith,  Prichard  and  Latham,  inclusive), 
— his  first  difficulty  will  be  to  settle  the  difference  iconographically 
between  a  "Lapp"  and  a  "Finn."  I  have  failed  in  my  efforts  to 
obtain  one  of  the  former ;  of  the  latter  (!Nb.  7)  I  am  by  no  means 
certain.596 

According  to  modern  statisticians,  the  population  of  the  world  is 
calculated  to  exceed  1200  millions.  About  600,  more  or  less  available, 
ethnological  portraits  are  the  limit  of  my  estimate  of  public  icono- 

594  Those  (about  40,  I  think)  procured  by  the  Exploration  scientifique  en  Algerie  are  inedited. 
Very  beautiful  they  are,  in  the  Parisian  Galerie  Anthropologique.  It  will  be  noted  that  I 
use  the  terms  " reliable  colored  portraits"  accessible  through  publications.  The  treasures 
contained  in  private  portfolios  do  not,  of  course,  enter  into  this  category,  being  inaccessible. 

695  Mengin,  Op.  cit.  (supra,  note  576). 

696  See  what  Dr.  Meigs  says  (Chap.  Ill,  pp.  267-70,  ante). 


616  DISTINCTIONS    OBSERVABLE    AMONG 

graphical  property,  bearing  upon  types  of  man — Europeans  hardly 
included  —  now  in  existence.  This  enables  ethnography  at  the 
present  advanced  day  to  boast,  that  she  possesses  about  half  an  indi- 
vidual per  million  to  represent  all  Mankind !  whereas,  out  of  216 
known  species  of  Monkeys,  there  are  not  a  dozen  of  which  naturalists 
do  not  possess  exact  and  elegant  delineations.  And  yet,  steeped  in 
the  slough  of  our  common  ignorance,  it  is  pretended  to  give  us 
systems  vindicating  the  "unity  of  the  human  species." 

Under  all  these  lamentable  deficiencies,  my  attempt  reduces  itself 
to  an  exhibition  of  54  of  the  best  characterized  ethnographic  portraits 
condensible  into  a  "Tableau."  Their  number  [fifty-four)  is  purely 
accidental.  No  cabalistic  enigma  underlies  its  selection,  which  was 
superinduced  merely  by  the  mechanical  eligibilities  considered  requi- 
site by  our  publishers.  What  may  have  been  the  labor  incurred  to 
present  even  so  small  a  number  at  one  view,  may  be  inferred  through 
the  Table  of  References.  Such  as  it  is,  the  reader  will  find  nothing 
yet  published  comparable  to  it  for  attempted  accuracy ;  at  the  same 
time  that  none  can  be  more  alive  than  myself  to  its  defects,  nor  will 
be  more  happy  to  hail  the  publication  of  something  better  within  the 
limited  price  of  this  present  volume.  Had  not  this  last  inexorable 
condition  been  part  of  our  publishing  arrangements,  my  own  port- 
folio and  note-books  could  have  supplied  for  every  row  (except  for 
the  Australian  realm,  which  seems  tolerably  complete  in  6  specimens) 
18  different  heads,  each  typical  of  a  race,  in  lieu  of  only  6 ;  and 
then,  through  132  colored  portraits,  a  commencement  might  have 
been  made  to  portray,  at  one  view,  the  earth's  known  inhabitants ; 
leaving  to  future  collectors  the  task  of  adding  other  types,  in  the 
ratio  either  of  their  discovery  or  of  their  acquisition,  to  ethnic  icono- 
graphy. With  these  remarks,  the  "Tableau"  is  submitted  to  liberal 
criticism ;  which  will  perceive  the  reason  why  so  many  essential  and 
well-known  types  are  unavoidably  excluded,  in  the  fact  that  132 
distinct  things  cannot  be  compressed  into  a  space  adapted  to  54. 

A    FEW    CLOSING    OBSERVATIONS. 

Notwithstanding  that  perfectly-traced  fac-similes,  and  sometimes 
the  original  plates  and  photographs  themselves,  were  placed  in 
the  hands  of  the  best  lithographic  establishment  in  this  city,  rigid 
comparison  with  a  few  of  the  originals  referred  to  in  the  explanatory 
text,  will  prove  what  has  been  previously  deplored  regarding  ethno- 
logical portraits  generally,  viz.,  that  a  merely  artistic  eye,  untrained 
in  this  new  "specialite"  of  art,  is  unable  even  to  copy  with  absolute 
correctness.     A  draughtsman,  accustomed  to  draw  solely  European 


VARIOUS    GROUPS    OF    HUMANITY.  617 

faces,  cannot,  without  long  practice  and  a  peculiar  instinct  for  race- 
iconography,  seize,  on  so  small  a  scale  as  such  drawings  must  he 
made,  the  delicate  distinctions  between  ethnic  lineaments  perceived 
by  the  eye  of  an  anthropologist.  In  consequence,  it  has  happened 
in  our  Tableau,  that,  through  infinitesimal  touches  of  his  pencil, 
there  are  few  heads  (in  the  eyes  especially)  which  have  not  been  more 
or  less  Uuropeanized  by  the  artist.  These  defects  are  herein  irre- 
mediable ;  nor  would  I  call  attention  to  them,  but  to  meet  a  possible 
(nay,  very  probable)  charge,  that  these  portraits  have  been  tampered 
with  in  order  to  favor  Dr.  Nott's  and  my  common  polygenistic 
views:  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  the  truth  is,  that  artistic  execution, 
by  softening  down  diversities  of  feature,  palpable  in  the  originals, 
seems  unconsciously  to  have  labored  rather  to  gratify  the  yearnings 
and  bonhomie  of  philanthropists  and  monogenists. 

In  respect  to  the  coloring,  also,  although  to  each  face  I  have  ap- 
pended authority  for  its  hue,  much  allowance  should  be  made  for  a 
book  the  price  of  which,  to  the  American  subscriber,  must  not 
exceed  $5.  The  colorist  (who  has  performed  her  part  extremely 
well)  had  to  give  53  distinct  tints  to  54  (the  Tasmanians,  ISTos.  53,  54, 
being  one  color)  different  faces, —  each,  too,  restricted  to  one  stroke 
of  her  brush.  To  have  attempted  the  coloration  of  eyes,  hair,  or 
dress,  would  have  made  this  volume  cost  half  as  much  again.  Never- 
theless, I  have  deposited  with  our  publishers  one  standard  and 
completely-colored  copy,  critically  executed  by  my  wife,  and  they 
tell  me  that  any  one  desirous  of  possessing  our  "Ethnographic 
Tableau,"  perfectly  colored,  varnished,  and  mounted  upon  rollers,  can 
obtain  such  copy  on  application  to  them,  and  paying  the  expense 
thereof. 

As  for  the  wood-cuts, — in  our  present,  no  less  than  in  our  former 
volume  —  I  am  free  to  say,  that  the  only  extenuation,  for  often- 
stupid  deviations  from  perfectly-drawn  originals,  lies  simply  in  the 
fact,  that  where  (owing  to  bibliothecal  deficiencies  in  a  given  spot 
of  our  yet  new  and  youthful  American  republic)  the  plates  them- 
selves could  not  be  furnished  to  the  engraver,  my  wife's  pencil-marks 
on  the  box-wood  "blocks"  having  been  rubbed  more  or  less  in  our 
travels, —  or,  by  carelessness,  after  their  delivery  to  the  wood-cutter 
—  "pencils,"  under  such  circumstances,  are  treacherous  and  slip- 
pery. Hence  our  collaborators,  Messrs.  Pulszky  and  Meigs,  I  am 
sure,  will  be  charitable  enough  to  overlook  any  accidental  drawbacks 
to  the  attainment  of  that  correctness,  which  was  equally  desired  by 
Mrs.  Gliddon,  Dr.  Nott,  and  myself.  The  reader  will  also,  I  trust, 
be  so  considerate  as  to  overlook  such  blemishes  in  the  artistic, 
cranioscopic,  and  typograpical  exactitude  of  our  book. 


618  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU. 

ON  THE 
ETHNOGRAPHIC   TABLEAU, 

EXHIBITINQ 

SPECIMENS   OF   VARIOUS   RACES   OF  MANKIND. 


Adopting  entirely,  for  my  own  part,  Prof.  Agassiz's  zoological  dis- 
tribution of  animals  into  REALMS, — subdivided  into  Faunae — I  bad 
prepared  prefatory  observations  on  eacb  of  tbe  former,  whicb  lack  of 
space  now  obliges  me  to  reduce  to  a  minimum  consistent  witb  per- 
spicacity. 

So  many  have  been  tbe  mistakes  committed  (even  by  good  scbolars), 
as  regards  tbe  honored  Professor's  meaning,  in  the  terms  "Realms" 
and  "  Faunse," 597  that  the  reader's  attention  is  again  especially  invited 
to  the  "  Sketch  of  the  Natural  Provinces  of  the  Animal  World,  and 
their  relation  to  the  different  Types  of  Man ;"  which,  with  its  tableau 
and  map,  forms  a  prominent  feature  in  Kbit's  and  my  Types  of  Man- 
hind. 

It  is  upon  such  inferred  knowledge,  on  the  reader's  part,  that  our 
"Ethnographic  Tableau"  has  been  projected.  The  first  column  of 
letter-press  contains  Prof.  Agassiz's  "Geographical  distribution:" — 
the  second  Dr.  Meigs's  "  Cranioscopic  examples:"  —  the  third  my 

597  1.  A.  D'Abbadie  (Observations  sur  VOuvrage  intitule:  Types  of  Mankind,  par  MM.  Noil 
and  Gliddon  —  Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  de  Geographic,  No.  55,  Juillet,  Paris,  1855,  p.  41)  —  "M. 
Agassiz  adniet  huit  types  humains  primitifs."  Refuted  by  M.  A.  Mauky,  in  the  same  Jour- 
nal (pp.  46-51).  2.  Heywood  (translation  of  Von  Bohlen's  Inlrod.  to  the  Book  of  Genesis, 
London,  8vo,  1855;  II,  appendix  2,  p.  278) — "Hottentot  realm;"  instead  of  fauna.  3.  A 
writer  (Charleston  Medical  Journal,  1855 — "  An  Examination  of  Prof.  Agassiz's  Sketch,"  &c.) 
confounds  realms  with  fauna  in  a  manner  that,  shows  he  does  not  even  eompi-ehend  termino- 
logy [e.g.,  "Mongolian  realm"  (p.  36) — "Prof.  A.  has  formed  two  realms  in  Africa;" 
"Hottentot  realm"  (p.  37]  :  but  inasmuch  as  this  would-be  naturalist  duly  received  a  quietus 
at  the  hands  of  Luke  Bur.ee  (Charleston  Med.  Journ.,  July,  1856,  Art.  I),  he  may  remain 
dropped  where  he  was  long  ago,  by  Morton  and  by  myself  (Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  lvi  and 
628,  note  210).  4.  Cull  (Address  to  the  Ethnological  Society  of  London,  1854,  p.  8)  — "5. 
The  Negro  realm.  6.  The  Hottentot  realm."  No  such  classes  occur  in  Prof.  Agassiz's  paper. 
5.  Anon.  (Westminster  Review,  No.  XVIII,  April,  1856;  Art.  Ill,  p.  364)  —  "eight  realms, 
*  *  *  Hottentot,"  as  one  of  them,  in  lieu  of  fauna.  6.  Anon.  (London  Athenaeum,  June  17, 
1854,  Review) —  [Prof.  Agassiz]  "divides  mankind  into  eight  types,  each  of  which  has  its 
realm,  with  its  peculiar  animal  inhabitants.  They  are  as  follows : — 1.  Arctic ; — 2.  Mongol ; 
— 3.  European; — 4.  American; — 5.  African; — 6.  Hottentot;  —  7.  Malayan;  —  8.  Austra- 
lian," &c. 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       619 

individual  conception  of  "Mankind,  grouped  physiologically:" — and 
the  fourth  a  synopsis,  by  myself,  of  the  "Linguistic  distinctions" 
deducible  from  M.  Alfred  Maury's  Chapter  I,  in  the  present  volume. 
I  proceed  to  succinct  remarks  on  the  "Realms"  themselves;  fol- 
lowing each  by  specification  of  the  sources  whence  each  human  por- 
trait has  been  derived.  Precision  is  the  only  goal  attempted  to  be 
reached  by  this  tinted-Tableau's  compiler:  and  the  primary  fact  that 
will  be  acquired  by  its  inspector,  at  first  glance,  will  be  the  destruc- 
tion of  any  hypotheses  he  may  have  formed  concerning  the  alleged 
action  of  solar  influence  (as  per  Latitude  and  Longitude)  upon  Na- 
ture's aboriginal  coloration  of  the  human  skin  [any  greater  than  upon 
that  of  the  simice — see  Monkey-chart]  among  her  "types"  and  "races" 
of  the  genus  Homo. 


I. 

ARCTIC    REALM. 
(Nos.  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6.) 

The  newest — and  by  far  the  best — definitions  known  to  me  of  the  several  characteristics 
of  the  human  inhabitants  of  the  Hyperborean  zone,  being  already  supplied  by  our  collabo- 
rator Dr.  Meigs  [supra,  Chapter  III,  pp.  156,  168),  I  will  not  detract  from  the  merit  of  this 
first  utterance  of  special  studies  on  the  Polar  region,  which  he  has  been  prosecuting  for  some 
time  by  doing  more  than  inviting  re-perusal  of  his  remarks ;  coupled  with  reference  to  that 
excellent  little  compendium — "Productions  of  'Zones,'  illustrated  and  described"  (10 Plates 
and  10  pamphlets,  18mo  —  published  by  Myers  &  Co.,  London,  1854). 

REFERENCES    AND     EXPLANATIONS. 

No.  1.  — ESKIMO. 

["  TaWccdiktceeta,  Eskimaux  of  Igloolik :" — Parry,  2d  Voyage,  "  Fury  and  Hecla;"  London,  1824, 
p.  391.] 

Colored  from  Ross,  Voy.  Baffin's  Bay — "Arctic  Highlander  —  Ervick,  Native 
of  Prince  Regent's  Bay." 

Compare  Martin,  Nat.  Eisl.  of  Man  and  Monkeys,  London,  1841,  p.  278,  fig.  213. 

No.  2.  —  TCH  TJTKTCHI. 

[Inedikd, — from  my  friend  Mr.  Edward  M.  Kern,  artist  in  the  recent  Voyage  of  the  U.  S.  Corvette 
"  Vincennes,"  Capt.  Bodgers,  to  the  North  Pacific,  1853-6.  See  the  remarks  of  Dr.  Meigs  (supra, 
Chapter  III)  on  Fig.  12.] 

Compare  Desmoulins,  Races  Surnames,  1826;  PI.  I,  from  Choeis:  —  Hooper 
(Tents  of  the  Tuski,  London,  8vo,  1853)  gives  plates  too  small  for  reliance;  but 
observes,  "  Tchouski,  Tchuktche,  Tchutski,  Tchekto,  and  similar  appellations, 
I  believe  to  have  arisen  from  the  word  Tuski,  meaning  a  confederation  or  bro- 
therhood." He  divides  them  into  "the  Reindeer  Tuski,"  and  "the  fishing, 
or  alien  Tuski"  —  "two  distinct  races,  or,  at  least,  branches,  *  *  *  differing 
in  language,  appearance,  and  many  details  of  dress  and  occupation  (p.  34)." 


620  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU. 

No.  3.  — KOEIAK. 

["  Inhabitants  of  Kotzebue  Sound :"  —  De  Kotzebue,  Voy.  of  Discovery,  N.  E.  Passage.,  in  Russian 
S.  "  Rurick,"  1815-18 ;  transl.  Lloyd,  London,  1S21 ;  I,  Pi.  1.] 

Compare  Beechey  (  Voyage  to  the  Northern  Ocean  and  Beering's  Strait,  Lon- 
don,  4to,  1831, 1,  p.  250  seq.,  II,  pp.  567-76),  who,  in  describing  the  Esquimaux, 
eastern  and  western,  says,  "  both  people  being  descended  from  the  same  stock." 

No.  4.  — ALEOTJTIAN. 

["  Habitant  des  lies  Aleoutiennes :" — Choris, Voyage  Pittoresque  autour  du  Monde  (1815-1S) ;  Paris, 
fol.,  1822,  PI.  Ill,  6"=  livraison.] 

Compare  "  a  man  of  Kadiak"  (PI.  YI,  in  Martin  Saurr's  Account  of  a  Geog. 
.    and  Aslronom.  Exped.  to  the  Northern  Parts  of  Russia,  by  Comm.  J.  Billings, 
1785-94;  London,  4to,  1802.) 

No.  5.— AINO. 

["  Naturel  de  la  cote  septentrionale  de  Jesso :" — De  Krusenstern,  Voyage  autour  du  Monde,  1803-6, 
in  the  Russian  S.  "  Nadiejeda  and  Neva"  —  transl.  Eyries,  Paris,  1821 ;  Atlas  4to,  PI.  XV,  1 :  col- 
lated with  PI.  LXXIX,  of  the  Russian  folio  original,  St.  Petersburg,  1813.] 

Colored,  "  teint  brun  verdatre  foncey  according  to  Desmoulins  (op.  cit.,  pp. 
165,  286).  De  Krusenstern  (II,  pp.  89-90,  98-9)  considers  the  hairiness  of 
these  A'inos  to  have  been  exaggerated,  and  says  their  color  is  "  teint  brunfonce  et 
presque  noir."  Upon  showing  our  colored  head,  No.  5,  to  my  friend  Lieut. 
Habersham,  he  tells  me  that  it  does  very  well.  Already  (vide  supra,  "  Prefatory 
Remarks"),  I  have  been  enabled,  through  his  kindness  and  zeal  for  science,  to 
present  a  wood-cut  exhibiting  the  true  characteristics  of  a  race  so  little  known 
as  these  A'inos.     Here  is  Lieut.  Habersham's  description  :  — 

"  The  hairy  endowments  of  these  people  are  by  no  means  so  extensive  as  some 
early  writers  lead  one  to  suppose.  As  a  general  rule,  they  shave  the  front  of 
the  head  d,  la  Japanese,  and  though  the  remaining  hair  is  undoubtedly  very 
thick  and  coarse,  yet  it  is  also  very  straight,  and  owes  its  bushy  appearance  to 
the  simple  fact  of  constant  scratching  and  seldom  combing.  This  remaining 
hair  they  part  in  the  middle,  and  allow  to  grow  within  an  inch  of  the  shoulder. 
The  prevailing  hue  is  black,  but  it  often  possesses  a  brownish  cast,  and  these 
exceptions  cannot  be  owing  to  the  sun,  as  it  is  but  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
they  suffer  a  like  exposure  from  infancy  up.  Like  the  hair,  their  beard  is  bushy, 
and  from  the  same  causes.  It  is  generally  black,  but  often  brownish,  and  seldom 
exceeds  five  or  six  inches  in  length.  I  only  saw  one  case  where  it  reached  more 
than  half-way  to  the  waist ;  and  here  the  owner  was  evidently  proud  of  its  great 
length,  as  he  had  it  twisted  into  innumerable  small  ringlets,  well  greased,  and 
kept  in  something  like  order.  His  hair,  however,  was  as  bushy  as  that  of  any 
other.  As  this  individual  was  evidently  the  most  "hairy  Kurile"  of  the  party, 
we  selected  him  as  the  one  most  likely  to  substantiate  the  assertion  of  Broughton 
in  regard  to  "their  bodies  being  almost  universally  covered  with  long,  black 
hair."  He  readily  bared  his  arms  and  shoulders  for  inspection,  and  (if  I  except 
a  tuft  of  hair  on  each  shoulder-blade,  of  the  size  of  one's  hand)  we  found  his 
body  to  be  no  more  hairy  than  that  of  several  of  our  own  men.  The  existence 
of  those  two  tufts  of  hair  caused  us  to  examine  several  others,  which  examina- 
tions established  his  as  an  isolated  case. 

"Their  beard,  which  grows  well  up  under  the  rather  retreating  eye,  their  bushy 
brows,  and  generally  wild  appearance  and  expression  of  countenance,  give  them 
a  most  savage  look,  singularly  at  variance  with  their  mild,  almost  cringing, 
manners.  "When  drinking,  they  have  a  habit  of  lifting  the  hanging  mustache 
over  the  nose,  and  it  was  this  practice,  I  suppose,  which  caused  an  early  writer 
to  say,  "their  beards  are  so  long  as  to  require  lifting  up."  Though  undoubt- 
edly below  the  middle  height  as  a  general  rule,  I  still  saw  several  who  would  be 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       621 

called  quite  large  men  in  any  country;  and,  though  the  average  height  be  not 
more  than  "five  feet  two  or  four  inches,"  they  make  up  the  difference  in  an 
abundance  of  muscle.  They  are  a  well-formed  race,  with  the  usual  powers  of 
endurance  accorded  to  savages,  indicated  in  their  expansive  chests  and  swelling 
muscles.  Their  features  partake  more  of  the  European  cast  than  any  other. 
They  are  generally  regular,  some  even  noble,  while  all  are  devoid  of  that  expres- 
sion of  treacherous  cunning  which  stands  out  in  such  bold  relief  from  the  faces 
of  their  masters — the  Japanese  and  Northern  Chinese.  I  cannot  but  agree  with 
La  Perouse  as  to  their  superiority  over  those  nations.  *  *  * 

"The  Ainos  are  unpleasantly  remarkable  as  a  people  in  two  respects, — viz. : 
the  primitive  nature  of  their  costume,  and  their  extreme  filthiness  of  person. 
I  doubt  if  an  Ainu  ever  washes  ;  hence  the  existence  of  vermin  in  everything 
that  pertains  to  them,  as  well  as  a  great  variety  of  cutaneous  diseases,  for  which 
they  appear  to  have  few  or  no  remedies.  There  is  another  side  to  the  picture, 
however,  and  it  is  a  bright  one.  Their  moral  and  social  qualities,  as  exhibited 
both  in  their  intercourse  with  each  other  and  with  strangers,  are  beautiful  to 
behold.  *  *  * 

"I  cannot  account  for  Broughton's  assertion  in  regard  to  their  being  of  "a 
light  copper-color,"  unless  he  referred  to  a  few  isolated  cases.  As  I  have  pre- 
viously remarked,  we  saw  several  hundred  men,  women,  and  children,  and  these 
were  all  of  a  dark  brotvnish-black,  with  one  exception ;  which  exception  was  a 
male  adult,  strongly  suspected  of  being  a  half-breed."     {Op.  cit.,  pp.  311—14.) 

No.  6.  — SAMOYEDE. 

["  GovyrUa,  Kanin-Samojeden  :" — De  Middendorf,  Die  Samojeden  in  St.  Petersburg,  PI.  XIV.  (Yide 
Bulletin  de  la  Sac.  Eihnologique.  de  Paris,  1847, 1,  pp.  259,  295-7, 300-7  ;  and  St.  Petersburg  Zcitung, 
1847,  Nos.  77,  78.] 

Colored  from  Prince  Demidoff's  collection  in  the  Galerie  Anthropologique,  Jar- 
din  des  Plantes,  Paris,  1855. 

Compare  Desmoulins,  op.  cit.,  pp.  261-6: — Latham,  Native  Races  of  the  Rus- 
sian Empire,  London,  1854,  pp.  112-21:  —  Max-Muller,  Languages  of  the  Seat 
of  War,  London,  1855 ;  2d  ed.,  pp.  118-23. 


II. 

ASIATIC    REALM, 
(Nos.  7,  8,  9, 10,  11,  12.) 

"Asia  Polyglotta"  (Elaproth,  Sprach  Atlas,  Paris,  fol.,  1823;  and  Atlas  of  his  Tableaux 
historiques  de  I'Asie,  Paris,  fol.,  1826; — with  their  perspicuous  maps  of  Asia  at  different 
periods,  for  all  sources — )"  seems  likely  to  become  "Asia  Polygenea,"  whenever  anthropo- 
logy shall  possess,  about  her  multiform  human  occupants,  either  the  accurate  data  now 
acquired  for  elucidating  the  Egyptians,the  Arabs,  the  Hebrews,  the  Berbers,  and  the  Chinese, 
—  or  the  precise  knowledge  gained  in  her  inferior  departments  of  zoology.  Almost  every- 
thing known  about  Asiatic  ethnography  is  contained  within  the  present  and  our  former 
work,  taking  in  view  the  references  accompanying  any  statement  in  both. 

REFERENCES    AND     EXPLANATIONS. 

No.  7.— KAMTSCHADAU3. 

[Pbichard,  Natural  Bist.  of  Man,  London,  1855:  ed.  Norris;  i.  p.  224,  PI.  ix.— from  CilOEIS.] 

On  these  I  have  nothing  to  add  to  Dr.  Meigs's  remarks  in  Chapter  III. 


622  EXPLANATIONS     OF     THE     TABLEAU. 

No.  8.  — St.  LAURENT-ISLANDER. 

[ChoriSj  op.  cit,  liv.  7°.,  PI.  xvi.;  from  Behring'a  Straits,  American  side.] 

Von  Langsdorff  (Voy.  and  Travels,  London,  4to.  1813,  II,  pp.  31,  111-12) 
Doctor  to  Kotzebue,  says  of  the  Oonalaskans,  "  a  sort  of  middle  race  between 
the  Mongol-Tartars  and  the  North  Americans  " — and  of  the  Koluschians,  "they 
do  not  appear  to  have  the  least  affinity  with  the  Mongol  race:"  —  skin,  when 
clean,  nearly  fair. 

No.  9.  — TARTAR. 

["Chef  Tartare :" — De  Erusenstern,  op.  cit.,  PI.  xvii. ; — corrected  by  Russian  original,  Tab.  lxxxii.] 
Colored  by  descriptions   of  the   ancient  "Ou-Sioun,"   "Ting-Lings,"    &c, 
according  to  Chinese  historians  cited  by  Klaproth  ( Tableaux  hist,  de  VAsie,  pp. 
123-5,  162,  &c.) 

Compare  Desmodiins,  op.  cit.,  pp.  74-5,  80,  87,  163; — and  other  authorities 
in  Jardot  {Revolutions  des  Peuples  de  VAsie  Moyenne,  Paris,  1839;  ii.),  "Tab- 
leau synoptique,  chronologique  et  par  Race."  De  Erusenstern  (transl.  Ey- 
ries, 1821,  ii.  pp.  208-11,  222-6),  at  the  peninsula  of  Sakhalin  (Map,  PI.  28), 
coast  of  Tartary — narrates  how  the  Tartars,  of  whom  the  above  is  a  chief,  had 
driven  out  and  extirpated  the  "aborigines,  or  Ai'nos,"  and  were  a  totally  dis- 
tinct race. 

For  Tartar  ethnography  around  the  Black  Sea,  consult  Hommaire  be  Hell 
(Les  Slippesde  la  mer  Caspienne,  Paris,  3  vols.,  1845)  passim. 

No.  10.  — CHINESE. 

["Un  Chinois" — Barrow,  Voyage  en  Chine  (with  Macartney),  transl.  Castera,  Paris,  1805;  Atlas, 
4to.,  PI.  iv.;  and  i.  pp.  77-82.] 

There  are  many  forms  of  Chinamen,  on  which  I  have  no  space  to  enlarge ; 
but  this  is  a  good  normal  type. 

No.  11.  —  KALMUK. 

[Derivation  uncertain.] 

Colored  from  Hamilton  Smith,  Nat.  Hist,  of  the  Human  Species,  Edinburgh, 
1848;  "Swarthy  Kalmucks,  Elenth,"  PI.  28,  p.  462. 

Compare  Martin,  op.  cit.,  pp.  271-3,  fig.  207: — Cuvier,  Atlas,  Mammifires. 

The  best  descriptions  are  in  a  work  by  an  anonymous  hut  very  correct  com- 
piler ( Voyages  chez  te  Peuples  Kalmoucks  et  les  Tartares,  avec  23  figures  et  2 
cartes  geographiques,  Berne,  1792,  8vo., — p.  169  in  particular).  After  indi- 
cating the  clear  distinctions,  in  types  and  tongues,  between  the  various  races 
of  Caspian  Asia,  he  quotes  La  Motrate's  surprise,  "  d'avoir  trouve\  presque  sous 
le  meme  climat,  et  dans  le  meme  air,  les  Circassiens,  le  plus  beau  peuple  du 
monde,  au  milieu  des  Noghaiens  et  des  Kalmoucks,  qui  sont  de  vrais  monstres 
de  laideur." 

No.  12.  —  TTJDA. 

["A  man  of  the  Tuda  race ;"  Nilagiri  Hills, — Museum  Royal  Asiatic  Society :  Prichard,  Researches 
into  the  Physical  History  of  Manldnd: —  and  Nat.  Hist,  of  Man,  1855,  PI.  xi.  p.  353-4.] 

On  all  these  Dravidian  tribes,  see  Maury's  Chap.  I.,  pp.  fi2-5 ;  and  my  Chap- 
ter V.,  pp.  612-13.  The  best  descriptions  are  in  Sketch  of  Assam  (supra,  note  345 
514) ;   but  the    colored  portraits  are  too  small. 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       623 

III. 

EUROPEAN  REALM. 
(Nos.  13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,-19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24.) 

The  profound  author  of  "  Civil  Liberty  and  Self  Government " — ablest  exponent  of  human 
rights  as  understood  in  our  XlXth  century  by  Anglo-Saxons — has  expressed  the  embarrass- 
ments of  nomenclature  in  the  following  note : — 

"  I  ask  permission  to  draw  the  attention  of  the  scholar  to  a  subject  which  appears  to  me 
important.  1  have  used  the  term  Western  History,  yet  it  is  so  indistinct  that  I  must  ex- 
plain what  is  meant  by  it.  It  ought  not  to  be  so.  I  mean  by  western  history,  the  history 
of  all  historically  active,  non-Asiatic  nations  and  tribes — the  history  of  the  Europeans  and 
their  descendants  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  In  the  grouping  and  division  of  comprehen- 
sive subjects,  clearness  depends  in  a  great  measure  upon  the  distinctness  of  well-chosen 
terms.  Many  students  of  civilization  have  probably  felt  with  me  the  desirableness  of  a  con- 
cise term,  which  should  comprehend  within  the  bounds  of  one  word,  capable  of  furnishing 
us  with  an  acceptable  adjective,  the  whole  of  the  western  Caucasian  portion  of  mankind — 
the  Europeans  and  all  their  descendants  in  whatever  part  of  the  world,  in  America,  Austra- 
lia, Africa,  India,  the  Indian  Archipelago  and  the  Pacific  Islands.  It  is  an  idea  which  con- 
stantly recurs,  and  makes  the  necessity  of  a  proper  and  brief  term  daily  felt.  Bacon  said 
that  "the  wise  question  is  half  the  science,"  and  may  we  not  add  that  a  wise  division  and 
apt  terminology  is  its  completion?  In  my  private  papers  I  use  the  term  Occidental,  in  a 
sufficiently  natural  contradistinction  to  Oriental.  But  Occidental,  like  Western,  indicates 
geographical  position ;  nor  did  I  feel  otherwise  authorized  to  use  it  here.  Europides,  would 
not  be  readily  accepted  either.  Japhethian  would  comprehend  more  tribes  than  we  wish 
to  designate.  That  some  term  or  other  must  soon  be  adopted  seems  to  me  clear,  and  I  am 
ready  to  accept  any  expressive  name  formed  in  the  spirit  and  according  to  the  taste  of  our 
language.  The  chemist  and  natural  historian  are  not  the  only  ones  that  stand  in  need  of 
distinct  names  for  their  subjects,  but  they  are  less  exacting  than  scholars."  —  Op.  cit.,  Phi- 
ladelphia, 8vo.,  1853,  i.  pp.  30-1. 

Soon  after  the  issue  of  "Types  of  Mankind,"  a  pleasant  rencontre  here  with  Prof.  Fran- 
cis Lieber  led  to  conversation  between  us,  wherein  it  was  remarked,  that  the  name  of  a 
mythic  daughter  of  an  ante-historic  king  of  Phoenicia  (Agenor), — transported  by  Jupiter  in 
the  form  of  a  natatory  milk-white  bull  to  the  Isle  of  Candia  —  which,  as  Eitkopa,  had  not 
yet  become  applied  geographically  to  "Europe"  in  the  times  of  Homer,  should  have  given 
birth  to  an  adjective — "European" — that  (like  Caucasian,  Turanian,  &c,  supra,  note  460) 
now  designates,  as  if  they  were  an  ethnic  unit,  types  of  man  historically  originating  in  three 
distinct  Realms  (Arctic,  Asiatic,  and  European  properly  so-called),  and  races  as  essentially 
diverse  from  each  other  as  the  Faunae  of  these  Realms  themselves :  at  the  same  time  that, 
as  Bochart  [Phaleg,  IV.  33)  long  ago  perceived,  such  nations  differ  entirely  from  the  men 
of  a  fourth  Realm — "quia  Europoza  Africanos  candore  faciei  multum  superant." 

Prof.  Lieber  was  so  good  as  to  leave  with  me  (13th  July,  1854)  a  memorandum  embody- 
ing the  result  of  our  conference : — 

"  P.  S.  I  may  add  that  I  have  thought  of  the  following  names,  all  of  which  seem  poor 
to  me — 

Japhelians  (includes  too  much) ; 
Dysi-  Caucasians  (bad) ; 
Bupero-  Caucasians  (poor) ; 
Europa- Caucasians  (poorer). 


624  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU. 

"  I  really  think  Europidians  is  the  least  objectionable,  although  I  own  it  would  induce 
people,  at  first  glance,  to  suppose  that  it  includes  the  descendants  of  Europeans  only, 
whereas  the  name  ought  to  include  Europeans  and  all  their  descendants.  F.  L." 

Such  are  the  difficulties.  I  do  not  propose  to  resolve  them :  but  would  inquire  of  fellow- 
ethnologists  —  inasmuch  as  we  now  know  that,  in  primordial  Europe,  there  once  existed 
(prior  to  the  tripartite  Celtic,  Indo-Gerinan,  and  Shlavic,  immigrations),  men  whose  silcx- 
instruments  lie  entombed  in  French  diluvial  drift,  men  whose  humatile  vestiges  are  found 
in  ossuaries  and  bone-caverns,  men  who  in  Anglia  and  in  Scandinavia  preceded  the  Kelt ; 
just  as  there  are  still  living,  in  modern  Europe,  their  Basque  and  Albanian,  amid  other, 
successors — whether  it  might  not  be  convenient  to  adopt  Prof.  Lieber's  term  "  Europidians" 
(or,  Europidce),  by  way  of  distinguishing  such  primary  human  stratifications  from  the 
secondary,  now  comprised  in  the  current  word  "Europeans"  ? 

REFERENCES    AND    EXPLANATIONS. 
No.  13.  — FINN. 

f"  Jannes  Holm,"  Norway  Laplander: — Hamilton  Smith,  op.  cit.,  PI.  XXX.,  p.  463;  "The  diminu- 
tive Laplander  of  Norway,  similarly  marked  with  Finnic  interunion" — compare  pp.  318-20.J 

'"Dan  and  Angul,  says  the  venerable  historian  Saxo-Grammaticus,  were 
brothers:1" — that  is  to  say,  the  Danes  and  the  English  descend  from  one  ances- 
try. Angelm,  whence  the  Angles  came  to  Anglia,  lies  in  Denmark  proper; 
and  the  Jutes,  Jutlanders,  came  over  to  England  with  the  Saxons."  (Elt.es- 
mere,  op.  cit.  (supra,  note  532)  p.  1 : — Also,  for  "  Norman  names,"  consult  Me- 
moires  de  la  Soc.  R.  des  Antiquaries  du  Nord,  Copenhagen,  8vo.,  1852.)  [See 
p.  434,  ante.] 

"  With  regard  to  externals,"  says  the  translator  of  Geoegi  (Russia,  or  a  com- 
plete Historical  account  of  all  the  Nations  which  compose  that  empire,  London,  8vo., 
1780,  i.  p.  37,  45),  "the  Finns  differ  nothing  from  the  Laplanders"  —  being 
flat  against  the  observations  of  Capell  Brooks!  But  the  separation  of  the 
Finns  from  the  Laplanders  is  supposed  to  have  taken  place  in  the  13th  cen- 
tury, after  the  forcible  conversion  of  the  former  to  Christianity.  However, 
the  very  best  work  on  all  the  Russian  peoples  is  Count  Chables  de  Rech- 
berg's  (Les Peuples  de  la  Russie,  &c. — with  94  figures,  Paris,  2  vols,  fol., — with- 
out date,  but  during  the  reign  of  Nicholas).  He  says  (i.  p.  6),  "  How  many 
nations,  how  many  religions,  how  many  tongues,  what  varied  customs  in  this 
immense  State !  Let  its  diverse  habitants  be  compared,  and  what  distances 
between  their  forms,  their  manner  of  living,  their  costumes,  their  tongues,  their 
opinions !  "What  a  difference,  for  instance,  betwixt  the  Livonian  and  the  Kal- 
mouk,  betwixt  the  Russ  and  the  Samoiede,  betwixt  the  Finn  and  the  Caucasian, 
betwixt  the  Aleutian  and  the  Cossack!  What  divers  degrees  of  civilization, 
from  the  Samoiede,  who  merely,  so  to  say,  vegetates  in  his  smoky  hut,  to  the 
affluent  inhabitant  of  St.  Petersburg  or  of  Moscow,  who  expresses  himself  in  the 
language  of  Voltaire  almost  equally  to  a  Parisian!"  He  enumerates  99  races, 
grouped  into  five  types.  It  must  be  from  this  work's  suggestions  that  Prince 
Demidoff  created  that  beautiful  series  of  colored  casts  of  Russian  races  now 
in  the  Galerie  Anthropologique. 

No.  14.  —  ICELANDER. 

["Pe'fcur  Olaffsen.    Pecheur  de  Rekiavik : — Gaimard,  Voy.  en  Maude  ei  en  Givcnlande,  Corvette 
"  Recherche  "  (1S35-6),  Paris,  1840 ;  fol.  Atlas  hist.,  I.] 

Colored  by  descriptions.      Vide  supra,  Chap.  V.,  pp.   584-5. 

No.  15.  — BARON  CUTTER. 

[From  lithograph  of  his  portrait  by  Maurin.) 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       625 

"  George  Cuvier,  the  first  of  all  descriptive  anatomists,  and  the  scientific 
man  who  first,  after  Aristotle,  applied  the  art  of  anatomy  to  general  science, 
was  born  on  the  23d  of  August,  1769,  at  Montbeliard,  a  small  and  originally 
a  German  town,  but  long  since  incorporated  within  the  French  territories.  He 
was  a  native  of  Wirtemberg,  a  German  in  fact,  and  not  a  Frenchman  in  any  sense 
of  the  term,  saving  a  political  one.  The  family  came  originally  from  a  village 
of  the  Jura,  bearing  the  same  name,  of  Swiss  origin  therefore,  and  a  native 
of  the  country  which  gave  birth  to  Agassiz.  In  personal  appearance  he 
much  resembled  a  Dane,  or  North  German,  to  which  race  he  really  belonged. 
Cuvier  then  was  a  German,  a  man  of  the  German  race,  an  adopted  son  of  France, 
but  not  a  Celtic  man  [nor  a  Keli],  not  a  Frenchman.  In  character  he  was  in 
fact  the  antithesis  of  their  race,  and  how  he  assorted  and  consorted  with  them 
it  is  difficult  to  say.  Calm,  systematic,  a  lover  of  the  most  perfect  order, 
methodical  beyond  all  men  I  have  ever  seen,  collective  and  accumulative  in  a  sci- 
entific point  of  view,  his  destinies  called  him  to  play  a  grand  part  in  the  midst 
of  a  non-accumulative  race,  a  race  with  whom  order  is  the  exception,  disorder 
the  rule.  But  his  place  was  in  the  Academy,  into  which  neither  dema- 
gogues nor  priests  can  enter.  Around  him  sat  La  Place,  Arago,  Gay-Lussac, 
Humboldt,  Ampere,  Lamarck,  Geoffroy.  This  was  his  security,  these  his  coad- 
jutors, this  the  audience  which  Cuvier,  the  Saxon,  and  therefore  the  Protestant, 
habitually  addressed.  It  was  whilst  conversing  with  him  one  day  in  his  library, 
which  opened  into  the  Museum  of  Comparative  Anatomy,  a  museum  which  he 
formed,  that  the  full  value  of  his  position  forced  itself  upon  me.  This  was,  I 
think,  during  the  winter  of  1821  or  '22.  A  memoir  had  been  discussed  a  day 
or  two  before  at  the  Academy :  I  remarked  to  him  that  the  views  advocated  in 
that  memoir  could  not  fail  to  be  adopted  by  all  unprejudiced  men  (hommes  suns 
prejuges)  in  France.  '  And  how  many  men  sans  prejuges  may  there  be  in 
France  V  was  his  reply. 

"  '  There  must,'  I  said,  'be  many,  there  must  be  thousands.' 

"  'Reduce  the  number  to  forty,  and  you  will  be  nearer  the  truth,'  was  the 
remarkable  observation  of  my  illustrious  friend. 

I  mused  and  thought." — (R.  Knox,  M.  D.,  F.  R.  S.  E.,  Great  Artists  and  Great 
Anatomists,  London,  12mo.  1852,  pp.  18-19. 

No.  16.— BULGARIAN. 

["Famille  Bulgare:"  —  Gajmard  (Commission  Scientifique  du  Nord),  Toy.  au  Spitaburg,  Laponte, 
4c,  (1838-40) ;  Atlas  Pittor.,  66"=.  liv."| 

See  excellent  "Portraits-types  Turcs  et  Grees  de  la  Roume'lie,"  with  others 
of  Circassians,  Kurds,  &c,  in  Hommaire  de  Hell  ( Voyage  en  Turquie  et  en 
Perse,  Paris,  1854,  Atlas  fol.,  Pis.  viii.,  liii.,  xlviii. :  and,  for  everything  else 
here  needful,  D'Ohsson  Tableau  general  de  V Empire  Ottoman,  Paris,  fol.,  1790- 
1820;  II,  pp.  136-7;  Plates  63-74.) 

No.  17.-GREEK. 

["  Palicar  [guerilla],  lies  de  PArehipel.  Grec:—  Galerk  Royale  de  Costumes,  Aubert  k  C'e.,  Paris, 

fol.,  PI.  8.] 

On  this  face,  M.  Pulszky  comments,  in  a  private  letter  to  me,  that  this  man 
is  a  Sclavonian.  I  agree  with  him ;  but  such  is  the  normal  type  of  Moreots  at 
the  present  day. 

No.  18.— CAUCASIAN. 

["  Prince  Kasbek  (Oss6ti§) :"— Gagarine,  Costumes  du  Caucase,  Paris,  fol.  3852.] 

I  mean,  as  the  highest  type  of  the  "  Men  of  Mt.  Caucasus"  (supra,  Chap.  V 
note  460).  I  have  no  space  to  enlarge  upon  this  mountain's  multiform  inha- 
bitants. 

40 


G26  EXPLANATIONS    OP     THE     TABLEAU. 

No.  19.  — SYRIAN. 

["  Habitant  de  Bethleem  (Palestine) :"—  Galerie  Royale  de  Costumes,  PI.  2.] 
A  most  characteristical  type  of  people  I  know  well. 

No.  20.— ARAB. 

["  Azerai  Arab,  near  CosseyT :" — by  Prisse  d'Avennes,  in  Jtfadden's  Oriental  Album,  London,  fol., 
.      1846,  PI.  8.] 

"  Voila  les  Arabes-Bedouins.  *  *  *  *  We  have  enlarged  somewhat  in  detail 
on  this  race,  because,  in  the  midst  of  this  hybrid  population  of  Syria,  — of  this 
confused  mixture  of  Greeks,  Jews,  Turks,  Barbaresques,  Armenians,  Franks, 
[i.  e.  Europeans'],  Maronites,  Drnzes,  and  Moghrabees — it  is  the  only  people 
that  oifers  a  special  and  homogeneous  character,  the  only  one  whose  ethno- 
graphy can  be  attached  to  primitive  traditions,  and  to  the  history  of  the  first 
ages  "  (Taylor  &  Reybadd,  La  Syrie,  VEgypte,  la  Palestine,  et  la  Judee,  Paris, 
fol.  1839,  i.  p.  125.) 

Ho.  21.  — FELLAH. 

\Inediled — modern  Egyptian  peasant:  —  Prisse  d'Avennes's  portfolio,  Paris,  1855.] 

Compare  the  ancient  and  the  modern  type,  as  before  exhibited  [supra,  Plates 
I,  II) ;  and  commented  on  by  Pulszky  (Chapter  II),  and  by  myself  in  "Prefa- 
tory Remarks." 

No.  22.  — BERBER. 

["  Troupes  d' Abd-el-Kader :" — Galerie  Royale  de  Obstumes,  PI.  1-] 

Compare  Cuvier,  Atlas,  Mammiferes : —  Bort  de  St.  Vincent,  Anthropologic 
de  VAfrique  Francaise  (Mag.  de  Zool.,  Paris,  1845),  PI.  60,  No.  II.  See,  also, 
my  Chapter  V,  pp.  527-43. 

No.  29.  —  UZBEK-TATAR. 

["  SjaJi  mierza,  geweezen  Cancellier  in  Golconda:"  —  from  M.  Pnlszky's  collection  of  forty-seven 
East-Indian  portraits,  by  native  artists ;  with  Dutch  MS.  catalogue,  "  Namen  der  Perzoonen 
wien  Conterfytsels  in  dit  boekje  Staan  met  aannyzing  htinnen  qualiteyteh,"  No.  35.] 

No.  24.— AFFGHAN. 

["A  de  Cabul  -"—Galerie  Royale  de  Costumes,  PI.  6.] 

Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  118-24 ;  and  against  the  latest  Affghano-Jewish 
theories  of  Rose  and  of  Forster,— besides  noting  the  colored  portraits  of 
Douraunees  in  Mountstuart  Elphinstone's  Cabul  —  set  the  following  affirma- 
tions from  Kennedy.  The  Affghans,  "originally  a  Turkish  or  Moghul  nation, 
but  that  at  present  they  are  a  mixed  race,  consisting  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Ghaur,  the  Turkish  tribe  of  Khilji  [swords?],  and  the  Perso-Indian  tribes 
dwelling  between  the  eastern  branches  of  the  Hindu  Kush  and  the  upper  parts 
of  the  Indus."  (Op.  cit.,  p.  6, —  supra,  V,  note  515;  citing  Leech,  in  Proceed. 
Geog.  Soc.  of  Bombay,  1838.) 


IV. 

AFRICAN  REALM. 

(Nos.  19,  20,  21,  23,  24.) 

If  "polyglotta"  was  so  felicitously  applied  to  the  Asiatic  world  by  Klaproth,  and 
equally-well  since  [supra,  Chapter  I,  p.  61.]  to  the  African  by  Koelle,  in  regard  to  the 
languages  spoken  over  more  than  half  the   terrestrial  superficies  of  our  globe,  another 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THK  TABLEAU.       627 

designation, — that  of  "multicolor" — might,  with  propriety,  be  given  to  the  human  abori- 
gines of  that  African  continent,  wherein,  betwixt  the  Tropic  of  Cancer  and  that  of  Capri- 
corn, the  human  skin  possesses  more  shades  and  hues — totally  independent  of  any  imagined 
climatologic  influences  —  than  in  any  given  area  within  the  rest  of  this  earth.  To  the  evi- 
dences of  this  fact  (new  to  general  readers,  who  fancy  that  a  woolly-headed  "negro"  must 
necessarily  be  black)  accumulated,  for  southern  Africa  in  Prichard's  last  volume,  and  for 
western  in  a  pamphlet  before  cited  (supra,  Chap.  Ill,  p. 224;  Chap.V,p.551), — whilst  in  the 
Parisian  galerie  anthropologique  abundant  colored  casts,  paintings,  and  photographs,  illus- 
trate all  three  regions — the  magnificent  plastic  collection  of  M.  de  Froberville  (supra  p.  608) 
will,  when  published,  furnish  for  eastern  Africa  singularly  unanticipated  corroborations. 
On  the  Mozambique  coasts  alone,  amid  the  nations  grouped  together,  by  this  minutely- 
accurate  observer,  under  the  designation  "  Ostro-Negro"  —  amid  whom  the  Mkuas  are  the 
most  polychrome — nature's  palette  has  supplied  pigments  of  such  innumerable  tints  that, 
only  sixty  colored  casts  have  yielded  4  distinct  nigritian  types,  subdivided  into  about  31 
"  varie'te's."  In  our  Ethnographic  Tableau,  Nos.  27  and  28  represent  two  of  these  tints; 
and  in  our  Monkey-chart,  figs.  F,  C,  and  D,  indicate  three  more. 


REFERENCES    AND    EXPLANATIONS. 
No.  25.  — ABABDEE. 

["Abd-el-Amid  elrAbbadi  — 40  ans^des  montagnes  a.  3  lieues  de  Coss&yr :"  Lefebvre,  Voyage  en 
Abyssinia  (1839^10),  Paris,  Atlas  fol.,  3.] 

Knowing  these  people  through  long  years  of  observation,  I  chose  this  as  an 
admirable  representation  of  their  normal  type ;  which  the  reader  can  contrast 
with  an  equally  good  Bisharree —  as  the  next  austral  gradation  along  the  Nile, 
eastern  desert  (Types  of  Mankind,  p.  203,  fig.  120).  See  Valentia  (  Voy. 
and  Travels,  India,  &c,  London,  4to,  1802-6,  II,  p.  289)  for  another  good 
profile  of  a  Bisharree  —  drawn  by  my  boyhood's  friend  and  manhood's  admi- 
ration, the  late  Consul-General  Henry  Salt. 

No.  26.  —  SAHARA-NEGRO. 

["  Type  Ethiopien  (Negre) :" — Bort  de  St.  Vincent,  Anthropologic  de  PAfriqw  Francaise,  Magaain 
de  Zoologie,  4c,  Oct.  1845 ;  Mammiferes,  PI.  6,  No.  Ill ;  p.  13.] 

Compare  (supra,  Chapter  V,  wood-cut  B),  front-view  of  the  same  head;  to- 
gether with  the  profile  of  the  Gorilla,  same  page,  wood-cut  C. 

No.  27.—  YEB00-NEGRO. 

("Oclil-Fekout-Dt',  natif  de  Yebou  (Age  d'environ  42  ans) :"  —  D'Avegac,  Notice  sur  le  Pays  et  le 
Peuple  des  YCbous  (Memoires  de  la  Society  Ethnologique) ;  Paris,  Svo,  1839  ;  Plate,  and  pp.  21- 
4,  45-6.] 

Colored  to  represent  an  ordinary  negro  ;  but  the  true  hue  is  said  to  be  "  un 
noir  brun." 

See  De  Froberville,  "sur  la  persistance  des  characteres  typiques  du 
negre"  (Bulletin  de  Soc.  de  Elhnol.  de  Paris,  1847,  pp.  256-7). 

No.  28.  — MOZAMBIQUE-NEGRO. 

["  Negre  de  la  CSte  de  Mozambique :" — copied  in  Brazil  by  Choris,  op.  cit.,  1'*  liv.,  PI.  III.] 

Colored  to  represent  one  of  the  various  shades  of  the  M'koua  nation,  in  the 
inedited  collection  of  60  plaster  casts  of  Africans  brought  from  Bourbon  and 
Mauritius  by  M.  de  Froberville  (Paris,  1855).  Vide  "Rapport  sur  les  races 
negres  de  l'Afrique  Orientale  au  sud  de  ]'e"quateur,  observers  par  M.  de  Fro- 
berville;" Comptes  rendus  des  seances  de  V ' Acadfmie  des  Sciences,  XXX,  3  juin, 
1850;  tirage  a  part,  pp.  11-14:  — also,  "Analyse  d'un  Memoire  de  M.  Eugeno 
de  Froberville,"  in  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  Ethnologique  de  Paris,  ann^e  1846,  I, 
pp.  89-99 : — and  Bulletins  de  la  Societe  de  Geographie. 


628  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU. 

No.  29.  —  CAEFK. 

["  Umbambu  (young  Zulu  in  dancing  costume)  :" — Q.  French  Anqas,  Kafirs  Illustrated,  London, 
fol.,  1849.] 

For  good  descriptions  —  less  tinctured  with  "Exeter  Hall"  philanthropy 
than  current  English  reports  —  see  Delgoeque  [Voyage  dans  VAfrique  Auslrale 
— "  Cafres  Amazoulous  et  Makatisses,"  Paris,  1847,  2  vols.  8vo) ;  who  has 
likewise  exhibited  these  nations  in  their  true  light,  in  "Note  sur  lcs  Cafres" 
[Bulletin  Soc.  de  Ethnologique  de  Paris,  1847,  pp.  132—48). 

Contrast  Louis  Alberti  [Description  physique  et  kislorique  des  Cafres,  Am- 
sterdam, 8vo,  1811,  p.  29),  and  Le  Vaillaxt,  [2d  Voy.  dans  VInlerieur  de 
VAfrique,  Paris,  1783-5,  II,  PI.  XXI,  in,  pp.  33-189),  with  Lichtenstein 
(Travels  in  South  Africa,  London,  4to,  1812),  who  overthrows  Barrow's  Sinico- 
Hottentot  predilections,  whilst  substantiating,  ad  pugnandum,  this  last  natu- 
ralist's deductions.  Patterson's  Narrative  (London,  1789),  Sparrman's  Cap 
de  Bonne  Esperance  (Paris,  1787),  and  Salt's  Abyssinia  (London,  1814)  furnish 
ample  materials  for  Polygenists. 

No.  30.  — HOTTENTOT. 

[Portrait  of  a  Hottentot,  aged  "  52  ana  —  costume  naturel — a  en  10  enfans" — exhibited  at  Paris, 
1854^5 ;  photographed  by  M.  L.  Roossead  —  Galerie  Anthropologique  du  Museum  cTHistoire 
NatureUe : — vide  infra,  pp.  608], 

My  friend,  Mr.  J.  Barnard  Davis,  having  shown  me  the  two  full-size  colored 
casts  of  "Bushmen,"  male  and  female,  in  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  I  am 
free  to  say  that  they  differ  as  much  from  anything  human  I  ever  saw,  as  a  pure 
Laconian  greyhound  does  from  a  "pug." 

Colored  from  PI.  24  of  Peron,  Voy.  et  Decouv.  aux  Terres  Australes 
(Baudin's). 

Excellent  drawings,  showing  the  gradations  of  feature  in  Hottentots,  Kaffrs, 
Bosjesmans,  Booshwanas,  &c.  in  Daniell  (Sketches  representing  the  Native  Tribes, 
Animals  and  Scenery  of  Southern  Africa,  London,  4to,  1 820)  ;  who,  speaking  of 
the  female  Hottentot,  adds  (p.  29)  that,  when  young  she  is  symmetrical,  but 
"gradually  degenerates  into  those  deformities  which  are  too  well  known  to 
require  a  particular  mention." 

No.  I  assert  that  these  peculiarities — which  incontestably  prove  the  Hotten- 
tots to  be  a  distinct  "  species"  —  are  not  only  little  known,  but  that  the  facts 
have  been  suppressed — and  by  Cuvier  himself — in  order  not  to  alarm  Monoge- 
nists!  The  subject  (see  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  431,  wood-cut  276)  is  not  fitted 
for  elucidation  in  a  popular  work  like  the  present ;  but  the  President  of  our 
Academy  of  Nat.  Sciences,  Mr.  Ord,  possesses  the  suppressed  plates  (which  he 
has  kindly  shown  me),  and  knows  where  the  original  colored  drawings  made  at 
the  Cape  by  Peron  and  Lestieur  are  preserved.  [See  Ord,  "  Memoir  of 
Charles  Alex.  Lesueur," — Silliman's  Journal,  2d  series,  1849,  VIII,  pp.  204-5, 
210: — and  take  note  that,  of  the  plates  beautifully  engraved  for  the  "Voyage 
aux  Terres  Australes,"  4  (exhibiting  the  "Tablier"  with  amazing  minuteness, 
and  at  all  ages,)  were  suppressed,  by  Cuvier's  order,  in  the  1st  ed.  1816,  and  in 
the  2d,  1831 ;  because  the  livr"  of  Mr.  Ord's  unique  copy  has  28  (1  with  2 
figures) ;  whereas  that  published  by  Arthus  Bertrand  contains  only  25 
plates.]  A  more  disgraceful  case  of  unscientific  pandering  to  the  "  Unity  of 
the  human  species"  can  nowhere  be  found.  Polygenists  will,  notwithstanding, 
get  at  these  truths  some  day ;  and,  in  the  interim,  can  gather  an  osteological 
difference  between  Hottentots  and  other  "species"  from  Knox  (Races,  Philad. 
ed.,  1850,  pp.  152,  157) ;  as  well  as  read  the  comments  of  Viret  (Hist.  Nat. 
du  Genre  Humain,  Paris,  1824,  I,  pp.  224,  244-53). 

It  is  to  the  injudicious  observations  of  John  Barrow  (French  translation  by 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       629 

CastSra,  Voyage  en  Chine,  Paris,  1805,  I,  pp.  77-82,  PI.  IV,  Atlas,) — and  to  his 
alone  —  that  a  notion  has  got  abroad  that  the  Chinese  and  the  Hottentots  re- 
semble each  other!  Pickering  (Races,  4to,  p.  219),  forty  years  later,  frankly 
states,  "I  am  not  sure  that  I  have  seen  Hottentots  of  pure  race." 


AMERICAN    REALM. 
(Nos.  37,  38,  39, 40,  41,  42.) 

To  ourselves  in  America  this  being  naturally  the  most  interesting,  we  may  devote  to  its 
consideration  a  few  more  paragraphs  than  space  admitted  for  the  others. 

"In  fine,  our  own  conclusion,  long  ago  deduced  from  a  patient  examination  of  the  facts 
thus  briefly  and  inadequately  stated,  is,  that  the  A  merican  race  is  essentially  separate  and 
peculiar,  whether  we  regard  it  in  its  physical,  its  moral,  or  its  intellectual  relations.  To  us 
there  are  no  direct  or  obvious  links  between  the  people  of  the  old  world  and  the  new;  for,  even 
admitting  the  seeming  analogies  to  which  we  have  alluded,  these  are  so  few  in  number  and 
evidently  so  casual  as  not  to  invalidate  the  main  position ;  and  even  should  it  be  hereafter 
shown,  that  the  arts,  sciences,  and  religion  of  America  can  be  traced  to  an  exotic  source,  I 
maintain  that  the  organic  characters  of  the  people  themselves,  through  all  their  endless 
ramifications  of  tribes  and  nations,  prove  them  to  belong  to  one  and  the  same  race,  and 
that  this  race  is  distinct-  from  all  others"  (Morton,  Distinctive  Characteristics  of  the  Aboriginal 
Race  of  America,  Philadelphia,  8vo,  2d  ed.,  1844,  pp.  35-6). 

The  Spanish  Conquistadores  had  long  ago  remarked  that  "  he  who  has  seen  one  tribe  of 
Indians,  has  seen  all:"  but,  it  must  be  also  remembered  that  Ulloa,  who  first  uses  this 
sentence,  was  speaking  of  Central  and  South  American  aborigines ;  and  not  of  the  Northern, 
or  Barbarous  (as  distinguished  from  Toltecan),  races,  —  with  whom  he  was  wholly  un- 
acquainted. 

"  The  half-clad  Fuegian,  shrinking  from  his  dreary  winter,  has  the  same  characteristic 
lineaments,  though  in  an  exaggerated  degree,  as  the  Indians  of  the  tropical  plains ;  and 
these,  again,  resemble  the  tribes  which  inhabit  the  region  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  — 
those  of  the  great  Valley  of  the  Mississippi,  and  those,  again,  which  skirt  the  Eskimaux  on 
the  North.  All  possess  alike  the  long,  lank,  black  hair,  the  brown  or  cinnamon-colored 
skin,  the  heavy  brow,  the  dull  and  sleepy  eye,  the  full  and  compressed  lips,  and  the  salient, 
but  dilated  nose.  .  .  .  The  same  conformity  of  organization  is  not  less  obvious  in  the  osteo- 
logical  structure  of  these  people,  as  seen  in  the  square  or  rounded  head,  the  flattened  or 
vertical  occiput,  the  large  quadrangular  orbits,  and  the  low,  receding  forehead.  .  .  .  Mere 
exceptions  to  a  general  rule  do  not  alter  the  peculiar  physiognomy  of  the  Indian,  which  is 
as  undeviatingly  characteristic  as  that  of  the  Negro ;  for  whether  we  see  him  in  the  athletic 
Charib  or  the  stunted  Chayma,  in  the  dark  Californian  or  the  fair  Borroa,  he  is  an  Indian 
still,  and  cannot  be  mistaken  for  a  being  of  any  other  race"  (Mokton,  Op.  cit.,  pp.  4-5: — Types 
of  Mankind,  p.  439). 

While  lately  at  Paris,  my  friend  M.  Maury  favored  me  with  the  loan  of  a  book,  then 
just  issued  from  the  press  of  (Cberbuliez)  Geneva, — by  M.  F.  de  Rougemont  (Le  peuple 
primitif,  sa  religion,  son  histoire  el  sa  civilisation,  2  vols.  8vo,  1855).  As  learned  as  the  works 
of  Count  de  Gibelin,  De  Pauw,  De  Gotgnes,  De  Fouemont,  Bailly,  Warburton,  or 
Dupois,  it  far  surpasses  that  of  Faber  (Origin  of  Pagan  Idolatry)  in  the  immensity  of  its 
geographical  range  and  the  variety  of  its  literary  sources.  Having  been,  in  due  course  of 
time,  reviewed  by  M.  Maury  himself  (Athenmum  Francois,  6  Octobre  1855),  some  passages 
of  his  article,  bearing  upon  the  literary  character  of  our  earliest  post-Columbian  authori- 
ties for  American  history,  are  here  introduced. 


630       EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU. 

"M.  Fre'de'ric  de  Rougemont  accepts  without  hesitation  the  contents  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment; avoiding  to  distinguish  between  the  moral  and  religious  part,  and  the  purely  his- 
torical and  geographical  part, — between  the  divine  part  and  the  human  part.  In  his  eyes, 
one  and  the  same  character  of  inspiration  consecrates  all  the  pages  of  the  holy  book;  and 
the  rdle  of  the  critic  reduces  itself  to  that  of  a  commentator.   *  *  * 

"I  shall  not  undertake  to  discuss  the  principles  upon  which  M.  de  Rougemont  scaffolds 
his  edifice.  I  will  restrict  myself  to  consigning  here  one  observation,  viz :  that,  although 
Protestantism  is  the  school  of  free  inquiry,  there  exist  in  its  bosom  some  persons  who,  in 
matters  of  biblical  exegesis  and  criticism,  show  themselves  much  less  liberal  and  less  bold 
than  the  Catholics  are  themselves.  Inasmuch  as  the  Protestants  feel  the  lack  of  an 
authority,  and  as  that  of  a  traditional  dogmatic  tuition  is  wanting  to  them,  they  cling  with 
earnestness  to  a  book  which  is  the  only  authority  to  them  remaining,  "and  they  will  not 
issue  from  a  literal  and  narrow  interpretation.  This  system  greatly  injures  the  advance- 
ment of  a  multitude  of  sciences, —  such  as  ethnology,  chronology,  geology,  &c. — that  have 
need  of  liberty  and  independence. 

"  In  order  to  proceed  in  a  method  truly  scientific,  it  is  necessary  to  clear  the  table  (/aire 
table  rase)  of  everything  which  has  no  scientific  value,  and  consequently  of  everything  that 
is  not  conformable  to  reason.  Sufficient  is  it  to  say,  that  the  domain  of  faith  and  the 
domain  of  science  are  altogether  distinct;  nor  can  they  be  confounded  without  compro- 
mising the  dignity  and  the  role  as  well  of  the  one  as  of  the  other.  But,  on  the  opposite 
hand,  science,  when  she  stands  upon  her  own  ground,  cannot,  without  self-abnegation, 
admit  that  to  be  demonstrated  and  certain  which  is  only  so  in  respect  to  sentiment.  The 
fault  of  M.  de  Rougemont  is,  to  have  constantly  mingled  the  two  methods ;  no  less  than  to 
have  believed  that  he  could,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  satisfy  purely-scientific  opinions 
and  religious  convictions. 

"  It  has  happened  to  the  author  of  this  book  what  had  occurred  to  the  first  missionaries 
who  went  forth  to  preach  the  gospel  among  savages.  Pre-occupied  with  the  thought  of 
re-finding,  in  the  tales  and  gross  imaginations  of  such  septs,  some  remembrances  of  the 
pristine  fatherland  whence  these  believed  themselves  to  have  issued,  the  missionaries  have 
modified,  often  unknowingly,  often  intentionally  likewise,  the  recitals  they  had  heard,  in 
order  to  invest  them  with  a  more  biblical  color.  They  have  transformed  into  serious  and 
connected  traditions  that  which  was  but  the  instantaneous  and  capricious  creation  of  a 
savage  poet  inspired  through  their  own  discourses;  and  it  is  such  stuff  which  they  have 
presented  to  us  as  the  seculary  reminiscences  of  the  savages  whom  they  were  evangelizing. 
Indeed,  these  infantile  stories  did  not  often  ascend  to  an  epoch  more  ancient  than  the 
missionaries  from  whom  we  receive  them, — and  already  the  influence  of  the  ideas  preached 
by  them,  of  the  facts  by  themselves  taught  to  their  catechumens,  made  itself  felt  within 
the  very  narrow  circle  of  the  conceptions  of  these  tribes.  In  this  manner,  the  apostles 
of  Christ  only  retook,  under  another  form,  that  which  they  themselves  had  sown ;  and  they 
registered,  as  ancient  traditions,  that  which  was  naught  but  the  fantastic  envelope  given  to 
their  own  teaching.  This  is  what  has  incontestably  occurred, — notably  on  the  discovery 
of  Amerioa,  and  more  recently  in  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Archipelago  and  of  Polynesia. 
It  suffices  to  cast  one's  eye  upon  the  first  accounts  that  the  Spaniards  composed  about  the 
religion  and  the  usages  of  the  Indians,  in  order  to  convince  oneself  that  the  former  con- 
stantly mixed  up  their  own  beliefs  with  the  fables  which  they  gathered  here  and  there 
amongst  the  savages." 

After  proving  his  positions — for  Mexico,  through  D.  Andres  Gonzales  Baecia,  Fran- 
cisco Lopez  de  Gomara,  Juan  de  Torquemada,  Father  Lafitau,  Gaecilasso  de  la 
Vega,  and  D.  Fernando  d'Alva-Ixtitxochitl  —  for  New  Zealand,  through  Sie  Geoeqe 
Geev,  [Dunmore  Lang],  J.  C.  Polack,  Diefenbach,  and  Mozeenhout  —  and  for  Peru, 
through  the  Jesuit  Pedro  Jose  de  Ariaga,  subjected  to  the  recent  scalpel  of  T.  G.  Muller 
[Geschichte  der  Amerikanischen  JJrreligionen) —  M.  Maury  glances  over  the  ultra-biblical 
notions  of  ancient  Egypt,  Greece,  and  Hindostan ;  and  lastly  touches  upon  the  traditions 
of  the  Hebrews : 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       631 

"That  which  comes  against  the  suppositions  of  our  author  is, —  the  very  trifling 
development  which  the  dogma  of  a  future  state,  and  of  demons,  had  taken  among  the 
Israelites ;  whereas  we  see  it  serving  as  a  basis  to  the  great  polytheistic  religions  of 
antiquity.  If  the  biblical  tradition  had  been  the  foundation  of  pagan  beliefs,  how  comes 
it  that  that  which  was  to  itself  the  most  foreign  should  have  played  amid  them  the  prin- 
cipal part  ?  And,  on  the  other  hand,  one  would  be  compelled  to  recognize  that  these 
heathen  nations  have  been  more  faithful  depositaries  of  the  primitive  gospel  than  the 
elect-people  itself, — because  Christianity  has  adopted  those  dogmatical  data  which  the 
Greeks  and  the  Egyptians  knew  a  great  deal  better  than  the  Hebrews.  Our  author  really 
feels  the  difficulty;  and  it  is  in  vain  that  he  tries  to  parry  the  objection  accruing  from 
it  against  his  system. 

"  There  is,  however,  one  point  upon  which  I  will  not  combat  M.  de  Eougemont,  and 
which  will  give  me  an  occasion  to  conclude  this  polemic  —  perhaps  a  little  too  prolonged 

—  with  a  treaty  of  peace.  The  Swiss  writer  respects  in  all  religions  their  dignity,  and 
that  which  may  be  called,  up  to  a  certain  point,  their  truth.  They  are,  indeed,  the  ones 
as  well  as  the  others,  the  expression  of  the  gratitude  of  man  towards  his  Creator,  towards 
Nature,  whose  benefits  sustain  his  existence.  They  constitute  the  more  or  less  naive 
shape  which  thought  puts  on  whilst  meditating  upon  our  destinies;  and,  as  such,  they 
have  the  right  to  be  seriously  studied ;  as  such,  they  must  find  place  in  the  history  of  that 
which  is  the  noblest  of  our  being.  Beneath  those  errors, — natural  fruits  of  credulity  and 
fear — that  encircle  human  belief,  there  lives  a  profound  and  instinctive  sentiment  which  is 
bound  up  with  all  our  good  instincts,  whensoever  it  be  suitably  directed  and  restrained : 

—  this  sentiment  is  that  of  the  soul  feeling  its  weakness,  which  has  need  of  the  support 
of  the  mysterious  Being  whence  it  proceeds.  This  sentiment  consoles  and  strengthens : 
it  is  the  refuge  of  the  honest  man,  and  the  motive-power  of  the  most  sublime  sacrifices. 
Science,  far  from  combating  it,  bows  before  it.  She  accepts  it  as  a  fact  as  evident  as  the 
most  evident  of  physical  and  historical  facts.  M.  de  Rougemont  feels  these  truths  with 
more  force  than  any  man,  because  it  is  the  excess  of  this  sentiment  that  leads  him  astray. 
He  wishes,  like  the  ancient  Gnostics,  to  behold  but  the  rays  of  which  the  luminous  portion 
becomes  enfeebled  in  the  ratio  that  they  remove  themselves  farther  from  the  Divine  focus 
whence  they  emanate ;  but,  whatever  may  be  said  about  it,  matter  has  also  had  its  part  to 
play  in  these  creeds  and  these  superstitions, —  and  the  majority  were  born  upon  a  soil  that  had 
not  been  warmed  by  the  gentle  light  with  which  he  is  illumined." 

Finally,  those  who  may  care  about  knowing  what  is  now,  in  France  and  Germany,  the 
scientific  stand-point  as  concerns  such  words  as  "Creation,"  "Deluge,"  "Ark,"  and  other 
Semitico-Christian  traditions,  have  merely  to  turn  over  the  leaves,  for  about  80  instances, 
sub  vocibus,  of  Didot's  Encyclopedic  Moderne,  last  edition. 

REFERENCES  AND  EXPLANATIONS. 

No.  31.  — KUTCHIN-INDIAN. 

["  Kulcha-Kutchin  warrior  (Loucheux- Indians  of  Mackenzie) :"  —  Richardson,  Arctic  Searching 
Expedition  (1848-50),  London,  1851 ;  I,  p.  381.] 

For  instinctive  hatreds  between  the  indigenous  Indian  races  and  the  Arctic 
Eskimo,  compare  Hearne  (Northern  Ocean,  London,  1769-72,  Chap.  VI), 
Hooper  (Tuski,  pp.  272-5),  and  Richardson  (Op.  cit.,  I,  pp.  377-402). 

No.  32.  — STONE-INDIAN. 

IStone-lndian  (near  Cumberland  House:" — Franklin,  Toy.  to  Polar  Sea,  London,  1823,  p.  104.1 

"  The  'Tinne"  [as  the  Eskimos  term  the  Indians],  or  Chippewyans  =  Indians, 
stretch  across  the  continent  of  America,  meeting  the  Eskimos  on  the  east,  and 
the  Kutchin  on  the  west  of  the  Rocky  mountains  (Richardson,  op.  cit.,  II,  pp. 
1-59).  No  two  types  are  more  distinct  than  American  Indians  and  the  Arctic 
men. 


632  EXPLANATIONS     OF     THE     TABLEAU. 

No.  33.  —  OTTOE-INDIAN. 

["Wali-ro-nee-sah,  the  Surrounder,  an  Ottoe-chief:" — Pkichabd,  Nat.  Hist,  of  Han,  1855;  II,  p. 
547  (from  Catlin),  PI.  LIU. 

No.  34.  — YUCATAN- INDIAN. 

["  Indien  Contrebandier  de  l'Interieur :" — Waldeck,  Voyage  PUtor.  ei  Archeol.  dans  la  Province 
de  Yucatan  (Amerique  Cenlrale),  1834-6;  Paris,  fol.  1S37;  PI.  V.] 

Unfortunately,  the  plates  in  Richard  Schomburgk  (Reisen  in  British  Guiana, 
Leipzig,  fol.  1835;  I,  p.  429;  II,  p.  42)  are  uncolored;  whilst  " Essetamaissu 
Wapisiana"  is  Europeanized.  There  are,  however,  excellent  descriptions  of 
the  colors,  &c,  in  Kobt.  H.  Schomburgk's  beautiful  work  [Twelve  Views  in 
British  Guiana,  fol.,  1841,  pp.  30-1). 

No.  35.  —  BOEOUA-INDIAN. 

[Debret,  Voyage  PUlor.  au  Bresil,  Paris,  fol.,  1835 ;  PI.  29,  fig.  8.] 

Colored  from  descriptions  in  De  Castelnau —  (Expedition  dans  les  parties 
centrales  de  V Amerique  du  Sud,  Paris,  1843-51,  "Vues  et  Scenes,"  pp.  6-14), 
compared  with  a  tint  obtained  at  the  Galerie  Anthropologique.  Morton  called 
them  "the  fair  Borroa." 

Von  Schwege  (Brasilien  die  Neue  Welt,  Brunswick,  8vo,  1830,  pp.  215-44), 
D'Orbignt  (Amerique  meridionale,  Paris,  1846;  Atlas,  Plates  1-13),  Prince 
Max.  of  Wied-Neuwied  (Travels  in  Brazil,  London,  fol.  1820,  pp.  311-12,  pi. 
xvii,  on  "  Botocudos"),  Debret  (Bresil,  Paris,  fol.,  1835,  II,  pp.  2  seqq.), 
Aug.  de  St.  Hilaire  (Rio  de  Janeiro  et  de  Minos  Geraes,  Paris,  8vo,  1830,  I, 
pp.  424-6;  II,  pp.  48-231) — not  to  mention  my  friend  M.  Ferdinand  de  St. 
Denis,  Librarian  of  the  "  Bibliotheque  de  St.  Genevieve,"  who  has  critically 
summed  up  the  whole  of  these  authorities  in  his  various  publications  —  may, 
perhaps,  arrest  the  attention  of  some  reader,  before  he  voluntarily  concedes 
that  monogenistic  views  on  human  "species"  are  things  yet  scientifically  esta- 
blished. 

No.  36.  —  FUEGIAN. 

["  Tapoo  Tekeenica —  Pecheray-marj :" — Fitzroy,  Surveying  Voy.  of  "  Adventure"  and  "Beagle'" 
(1826-39);  London,  1829,  n,  p.  141. 

Colored  from  descriptions  in  Idem;  and  in  D'Orbigny's  "L'Homme  Ame>i- 
cain." 


VI. 

POLYNESIAN    REALM. 
(Nos.  37,  38,  39,  40,  41,  42.) 

"Oce'anie,"  in  Dumont  d'Urville's  ethnic  map  (Voyage  dela  Corvette  VAslrolahe,  1826-9; 
Paris,  folio  Atlas,  1833: — 8vo  Text,  II,  pp.  610-30),  is  luminously  depicted  in  four  colors, 
viz :  Malaisie  in  blue,  Micronesie,  in  green,  ilelanesie  in  yellow,  and  Polynesie  in  pink. 

Only  the  three  last  named  subdivisions  comprehend  the  human  faunae  of  our  "Polynesian" 
Realm. 

What  their  respective  contrasts  are,  is,  in  our  Tableau,  inadequately  illustrated  in  one 
line  of  portraits.  What  the  greatest  of  modern  circumnavigator's  opinions  were,  on  the 
types  of  mankind  so  thoroughly  studied  by  himself,  may  be  gathered  from  three  paragraphs. 

"It  is  now-a-days  almost  averred  that  the  Alfourous  of  Timor,  of  Ceram  and  Bourou ; 
the  Negritos  del  monte,  or  Aetas,  of  Mindanao;  the  Indios  of  the  Philippines;  the  Ygolotes 
of  Luzon ;  the  Negrillos  of  Borneo ;  the  blacks  of  Formosa,  of  the  Andamans,  of  Sumatra, 


EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE     TABLEAU.  633 

of  Malacca,  and  those  of  Cochin-Chiua,  called  Hoys  or  Kemoys,  —  appertain  to  this  same 
primitive  race  of  Melanesians  [black-islanders]  who  must  have  been  the  first  occupiers  of 
Oceania. 

"  We  do  not  hesitate  to  believe  that  the  Polynesians  arrived  from  the  west  and  even 
from  Asia  [an  '  opinion']  ;  but  we  do  not  at  all  believe  that  they  are  the  descendants  of  the 
present  Hindoos.  They  had  probably  a  common  origin  with  them ;  but  the  two  nations 
had  been  already  separated  for  a  long  time,  when  one  of  them  went  to  people  Oceania. 

"  The  same  holds  good  as  regards  the  consequences  which  different  voyagers  have  drawn 
from  the  relations  observed  between  the  Polynesians  and  the  Malays.  Without  any  doubt, 
these  two  nations  had  of  yore  some  intercourse.  Lengthened  studies  have  caused  us  to 
discover  about  60  words  which  are  evidently  common  between  the  two  tongues;  and  that 
is  sufficient  to  attest  some  ancient  communications.  But,  there  is  too  much  difference  in 
the  physiological  '  rapports '  for  one  to  be  able  to  suppose  that  Polynesians  could  be 
merely  a  Malayan  colony." 


REFERENCES     AND     EXPLANATIONS. 

No.  37.  — NEW  ZEALANDER. 

["  Touri,  chef  de  la  Nouvelle  Zelande :"  —  Doperret,  Yoy.  autour  du  Monde,  "  Coquille  "  (1822-5) . 
Paris,  1826,  folio  Atlas,  No.  47.] 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  contracted  skin,  in  tatooed  New  Zealand 
faces,  proceeds  from  the  cicatrices  accruing  from  such  process. 

No.  38.  — SAMOA-ISLANDER. 

['•  Man  of  the  Samoan  Islands :"  —  Prichard,  op.  ctt.,  II,  PI.  XXvm,  p.  451.] 

Erskine  [Cruise,  II.  M.  S.  Savannah,  London,  8vo,  1853)  gives  the  most 
recent  and  the  best  accounts  of  the  commingling  of  diiferent  blood  in  the  west- 
ern Pacific;  since  those  of  Quoy  and  Gaimakd  (Zoologie,  "Astrolabe,"  1830,  I, 
pp.  15-57),  and  of  Lesson  and  Garnot  (Zoologie,  "Coquille,"  Paris,  1826,  I, 
pp.  8-116). 

No.  39.  — TIKOPIA-ISLANDER. 

["  Naturel  de  Ticopia :"  —  D'Urvllle,  Toy.  "  Astrolabe,"  PI.  177 ;  V,  pp.  109-14]. 

Colored  from  Idem,  PI.  185. 

See  Nott's  Chapter  IV  (supra,  note  29)  for  the  fact  that  these  fair  Islanders 
of  the  true  Maori  race  cannot  acclimate  themselves  on  an  adjacent  island  of 
the  same  Archipelago,  whereon  the  aboriginal  Blacks  flourish. 

No.  40.  —  VANIKORO-ISLANDER. 

["  Mainglw  de  Manovg :"  —  D' Urville,  op.  cit.,  PI.  176,  T,  p.  155]. 

On  this  island,  in  1788,  were  wrecked  two  French  frigates,  and,  amidst  these 
people,  with  all  the  gallant  Frenchmen,  perished  La  Peuouse — whose  immortal 
name  ennobles  this  archipelago.  The  accounts  of  Captain  Dillon,  and  of 
Dumont  d'Urville — who  himself,  after  braving  unharmed  the  perils  of  the  sea  in 
three  voyages  round  the  world,  was  burnt  up  in  a  rail-car  at  Meudon,  together 
with  his  wife  and  son  —  furnish  all  particulars. 

No.  41.  —  TANA-ISLANDER. 

["  Man  of  Tana,  New  Hebrides :"  —  Erskine,  Cruise,  <fc.  in  Western  Pacific  (1849),  H.  H.  S.  "  Ha- 
vannah;"  London,  1S53;  PI.  Ill,  p.  325.] 

For  an  admirable  "Tableau  synoptique  des  principales  variations  de  taille 
dans  les  races  humaines,"  which  includes  all  these  islanders  as  well  as  other 
types  of  man,  consult  Isid.  Geoff.  St.  Hilaire  (Anomalies  de  V organisation, 
Paris,  8vo,  1832,  I,  p.  235). 


634  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU. 

No.  42.  —  VITI-ISLANDER. 

["  Habitant  de  Havre-Carteret,  avec  sa  peinture  de  c6r6monie :" — D' Urville,  op.  cit.,  PI.  99,  IV,  p. 
446.] 

Colored  from  Idem,  PI.   100.     All   these  islanders  bedaub  their  faces,  and 
stain  their  hair  with  red  and  yellow  ochres. 


VII. 

MALAYAN   [otherwise  "  East-Indian "]  REALM. 
(Nos.  43,  44,  45,  46,  47,  48.) 

Raffles,  Marsden,  Crawfprd,  Looan:  — these  four  names  constitute,  among  the  latest, 
our  most  reliable  authorities. 

The  most  advanced  ground  of  their  researches  has  been  already  covered  by  M.  Maury's 
Chapter  I. 

Not  having  yet  received  Mr.  Crawfurd's  last  work  (1856),  I  must  present  the  reader  with 
this  gentleman's  views  (in  History  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  Edinburgh,  8vo,  1820;  I,  pp. 
13-28) ;  after  remarking,  that  European  first  acquaintance  with  the  Malay  race  commenced 
simultaneously  with  that  of  the  American,  viz :  only  at  the  close  of  the  XVth  century. 

"The  first  of  these  [facts]  refers  to  an  original  and  innate  distinction  of  the  habitants 
into  two  separate  races.  In  the  Indian  Archipelago  there  are — an  aboriginal  fair  or  brown 
complexioned  race,— and  an  aboriginal  negro  race ;  and,  the  southern  promontory  of  Africa 
excepted,  it  is  the  only  country  of  the  globe  which  exhibits  this  singular  phenomenon.  *  *  * 

"  No  country  has  produced  a  great  or  civilized  race,  but  a  country  which,  by  its  fertility, 
is  capable  of  yielding  a  supply  of  farinaceous  grain  of  the  first  quality.  *  *  x  Their  boats 
and  canoes  are,  to  the  Indian  Islanders,  what  the  camel,  the  horse,  and  the  ox,  are  to  the 
wandering  Arab  and  the  Tartar ;  and  the  sea  is  to  them  what  the  steppes  and  the  deserts  are 
to  the  latter.  *  *  * 

"  The  savages  of  New  Guinea,  surrounded  at  this  day  by  the  most  splendid,  beautiful, 
and  rare  objects  of  animal  and  vegetable  nature,  live  naked  and  uncultivated.  Civilization 
originated  in  the  west,  where  are  situated  the  countries  capable  of  producing  corn.  Man 
there  is  most  improved  ;  and  his  improvement  decreases,  in  a  geographical  ratio,  as  we  go 
eastward,  until,  at  New  Guinea,  we  find  the  whole  inhabitants  an  undistinguished  race  of 
savages.  *  *  * 

"  There  are  two  aboriginal  races  of  human  beings  inhabiting  the  Indian  Islands,  as  dif- 
ferent from  each  other  as  both  are  from  all  the  rest  of  their  species.  *  *  *  One  of  these 
races  may  be  generally  described  as  a  brown-complexioned  people,  with  lank  hair ;  and  the 
other  as  a  black,  or  rather  sooty-coloured  race,  with  woolly  or  frizzled  hair.  *  *  *  The  brown 
and  the  negro  races  of  the  Archipelago  may  be  considered  to  present,  in  their  physical  and 
moral  character,  a  complete  parallel  with  the  White  and  the  Negro  races  of  the  western 
world.  The  first  have  always  displayed  as  eminent  a  relative  superiority  over  the  second, 
as  the  race  of  white  men  has  done  over  the  negroes  of  the  west.  All  the  indigenous  civili- 
zation of  the  Archipelago  has  sprung  from  them ;  and  the  negro  race  is  constantly  found  in 
the  savage  state.  *  *  *  In  some  of  the  Spice  islands  their  extirpation  is  matter  of  his- 
tory. *  *  *  The  brown  colored  tribes  agree  so  remarkably  in  appearance  themselves,  that 
one  general  description  will  suffice  for  all.  *  *  *  The  standard  of  perfection  in  color  is 
virgin-gold ;  and  as  the  European  lover  compares  the  bosom  of  his  mistress  to  the  whiteness 
of  snow,  the  East-Insular  lover  compares  that  of  his  to  the  yellowness  of  the  precious 
metal.  *  *  *  The  complexion  is  scarcely  ever  clear,  and  a  blush  is  hardly  at  any  time 
discernible.  *  *  * 

"The  Papua,  or  woolly-haired  race,  of  the  Indian  islands  is  a  dwarf  African  negro.  A 
full-grown  male  brought  from  the  mountains  of  Queda  *  *  *  proved  to  be  no  more  than 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.       635 

4  feet  9  inches  high.  *  *  *  The  skin,  instead  of  being  jet  black,  as  in  the  African,  is  of  a 
sooty  colour.  *  *  *  The  East-Insular  negro  is  a  distinct  variety  of  the  human  species,  and 
evidently  a  very  inferior  one.  *  *  *  They  have  in  no  instance  risen  above  the  most  abject 
condition.  Whenever  they  are  encountered  by  the  fairer  races,  they  are  hunted  down  like 
the  wild  animals  of  the  forest,  and  driven  to  the  mountains  or  fastnesses,  incapable  of 
resistance.  *  *  * 

"The  question  of  the  first  origin  of  both  the  negro  and  brown-complexioned  races, 
appears  to  me  to  be  one  far  beyond  the  compass  of  human  reason.  By  very  superficial 
observers,  the  one  has  been  supposed  a  colony  from  Africa,  and  the  other  an  emigration 
from  Tartary.  Either  hypothesis  is  too  absurd  to  bear  the  slightest  examination.  Not  to 
say  that  each  race  is  radically  distinct  from  the  stock  from  which  it  is  imagined  to  have 
proceeded ;  the  physical  state  of  the  globe,  the  nature  of  man,  all  we  know  of  his  history, 
must  be  overturned  to  render  these  violent  suppositions  possible." 

REFERENCES  AND  EXPLANATIONS. 
No.  43. —MALAY. 

["  Native  of  Solor :"  —  Griffith's  Cuvier,  Animal  Kingdom,  London ,  1S27 ;  I,  Plate,  p.  186.] 

See  original,  with  some  variation  of  hue,  in  Peron,  Voy.  mix  Terres  Auslralet, 
(1800-4);  2d  ed. ;  corrected  by  De  Freycinet,  Atlas  Hist,,  PI.  V,  "sold  at 
d'Infant<jrie  Malaise." 

My  brother  William,  who  (with  my  brother  Henry)  has  transferred  his  resi- 
dence from  the  vicinity  of  Memphis  on  the  Nile,  to  Memphis  on  the  Mississippi, 
resided  four  years  in  the  Indian  Archipelago,  where  his  knowledge  of  Arabic, 
familiarity  with  Mussulmans,  and  clear  ethnological  perceptions,  enabled  him 
readily  to  acquire  Malay.  He  writes  me  the  following  on  these  portraits : 
"  Your  Malay  I  consider  to  be  the  offspring  of  a  Kling  (low-caste  man  of  Madras) 
and  a  Malay  woman.  The  Mintird  (No.  46)  looks  more  like  a  Malay.  Inter- 
course between  a  Kling  and  a  Malayan  woman  is  not  uncommon." 

No.  44.  — JAVANESE. 

["Singo-Sekar:"  — Tan  Pehs,  Oosl-lndische  Tvpen;  Holland,  folio,  1864;  5  afiering.] 

See  Raffles  (Hist  of  Java,  London,  4to,  1817,- — Plates,  frontispiece  &  I,  p. 
92 — -also,  p.  59)  for  the  fact  that,  inasmuch  as  high-caste  Malayo-Javanese 
complexion  is  "a  virgin-gold  color,"  this  "Singo-Sekar"  must  be  low-caste. 

No.  45.  — MARIANNE-ISLANDER. 

["  Claudio-Lajo  (Indien  de  race  pure),"  at  Guam  :— De  Fkeycinet,  Voy.  "  l'Uranie ;"  Paris,  1825,  PI. 
61,  No.  2.] 

No.  46  — HINDOO. 

["  Chaan-  Channa,  Veldheen  van  Yidzjapour :"— portrait  by  native  artist  (ubi  supra,  Chap.  II,  figs 
93-6),  in  the  Pulszkt  collection,  Dutch  catalogue,  No.  21 :  —  enlarged,  like  the  preceding  one, 
to  match  the  other  heads  in  this  Tableau.] 
Compare  for  characteristic  Hindoos  the  Hon.  Miss  Eden's  Portraits  of  the 

Princes  and  People  of  India,  London,  fol.,  1844.     Although  uncolored,  there  are 

none  so  good. 

No.  47.  — MINTIRA. 

["Man  of  the  Mintira  tribe"  (from  Gugong  Eermun,  who  lately  settled  at  Rumbiah  near 
Malacca: — Logan,  "  Physical  characteristics  of  the  Mintira"  —  Journal  of  the  Indian  Archi- 
pelago, I,  No.  V,  Nov.,  1847;  pp.  294-5;  and  Supplement,  Deo.  1S47;  pp.  328-35,  Plate  p.  307, 
2d  fig.] 

Colored  by  descriptions  in  No.  V,  pp.  247-8,  251 ;  but  no  special  reference, 
strange  to  say,  being  made  to  individual  coloration  in  these  critical  papers,  it  is 
as  well  to  compare  Vol.  II,  May,  1848,  pp.  245-8,  &c. ;  with  Hamilton  Smith, 
op.  cil.  pp.  224-8.     As  a  memento  of  the  changes  which  some  of  these  islanders 


636  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU. 

are  now  undergoing,  I  may  quote  from  Logan:  "Unlike  the  Mantawe  and 
Niha  [described  elsewhere],  the  Maruwi — at  least  those  of  Baniak — have  lost 
most  of  the  proper  Niha-Polynesian  habits,  and  adopted  those  of  the  Achinese 
and  Malays"  (Journal  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  Singapore,  I,  new  series,  No. 
1,  1856,  pp.  8-10). 

Ho.  48.  —  NEGRILLO. 

["  A  Papuan  or  negro  of  the  Indian  Islands  :"  —  Crawford,  Hist,  of  the  Indian  Archipelago, 
Edinb.,  1S20;  I,  PI.  1.] 

Compare  Pickering  (Races,  4to,  pp.  170-4,  and  PI.  VIII)  for  good  descriptions 
of  these  varied  and  most  inferior  races. 

Leaving  aside  the  romance  of  P.  de  la  Gironiere  ( Vingl  annees  aux  Philip- 
pines, Paris,  12mo,  1853),  the  best  accounts  of  these  "Negritos,  Indiens,  Tagales, 
Bisayas,  Igorotes,  Bariks,  Itapanes,  Tinguianes,  Guinaanes,  Yfugaos,  Gaddanes, 
Calauas,  Apayaos,  Ibilaos,  Bongotes,  Isinayes,"  are  in  Mallat  (Les  Philippines, 
Paris,  8vo,  &  Atlas  fol.,  1846);  who,  moreover,  furnishes  abundant  examples 
of  hybridily  in  its  most  extraordinary  combinations.  Above  a  million  of  the  abo- 
riginal Negritos  are  extant  at  the  islands  of  Luzon  and  Mindanao  alone. 


VIII. 

AUSTRALIAN   REALM. 
(Nos.  49,  50,  51,  52,  53,  55,  56.) 

Among  the  more  recent  authorities  consulted — aside  from  the  voyages  of  Cook,  followed 
by  the  whole  series  of  French  circumnavigators  —  such  as  Flinders,  Angas,  Montgomery 
Martin,  De  Strzelecki,  Leichhardt,  Mitchell,  Beete  Jukes,  &c. ;  it  is  from  Macgillivrat, 
nevertheless  ( Voyage  of  H.  M.  S.  Rattlesnake,  London,  8vo.  1852,  II,  pp.  1-3),  that  one 
derives  a  fact  really  important  enough,  —  always  supposing  the  reader  to  possess  some 
knowledge  of  the  zoological  amid  other  anomalies  of  that  uuaccountable  continent — to  be 
here  recalled.  This  fact,  observed  by  a  very  competent  witness,  is,  that  "  The  junction 
between  the  two  races,  the  Papuan  from  the  north,  and  the  Australian  from  the  south,  is 
effected  at  Cape  York  by  the  Kowraregas,  whom  I  believe  to  be  a  Papuan  colony  of  Austra- 
lians." Here  the  fusion  of  these  two  distinct  types,  through  amalgamation  and  at  their 
only  point  of  contact,  is  complete.  Five  distinct  native  tribes  are  blended,  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  this  Cape,  more  or  less  into  a  race  of  hybrids, — those  further  back  on  the  mainland 
being  pure  Australians,  and  those  across  Torres  Strait  on  the  islands  being  pure  Papauas ; 
the  characteristics  pf  both  types  becoming  contrasted  by  comparing  Nos.  41,  42,  with  Nos. 
49,  50,  51.  No  accounts  pretending  to  identify  the  now  perhaps  extinct  Tasmanians  (Nos.  53, 
54)  with  either;  or  to  suppose  communication  ever  existed  between  the  helpless  savages  of 
New  South  Wales  and  those  of  Van  Diemen's  Land ;  we  thus  discern  at  a  glance  that 
Papuans,  Australians,  and  Tasmanians,  are  animals  as  distinct  as  the  various  "  species  "  of 
kangaroos  found  upon  the  same  continent  and  island. 

REFERENCES     AND     EXPLANATIONS. 
No.  49.  —  NORTH  AUSTRALIAN. 

[;t  Nemare  (Sauvage  des  environs  de  la  riviere  Nepean),  Nouvelle  Hollander" — De  Freycinet, 
Toy.  et  Biamv.  aux  Torres  Australes,  "l'Uranie"  (lSOO^t);  PI.  100,  fig.  3.] 

No.  50.  —'WEST  AUSTRALIAN. 

["  Ourou  Mare",  Habitant  de  la  Nouvelle  Hollande :" —  Ctjvier,  Eigne  Animal,  Mammiferes,  PI.  8, 
fig.  I :  —  the  original  (also  uncolored)  is  in  Pehon,  op.  cit. 

Colored  from  Pickering,  Races,  V.  S.  Explor.  Exped.,  IX,  1848;  PI.  V,  pp. 

137-8.     Compare  Hamilton  Smith,  op.  cit.,  PI.  17,  &  p.  460. 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  THE  TABLEAU.      637 

No.  51.  —  SOUTH  AUSTRALIAN. 

["  MiUitie,  a  man  of  the  Battara  tribe  beyond  Port  Lincoln :"  —  G.  F.  Angas,  South  Australia  Illus- 
trated, London,  fol.,  181;  PI.  XVIII.] 

No.  52.—  TASMANIAN. 

["Jemmy,  Native  of  the  Hamplin  Hills  :"—  Strzelecej,  Phys.  Deser.  of  New  SoutkWales  and  Van 
Piemen's  Land,  London,  8vo,  lS15,p.  333.] 

Colored  by  descriptions. 
No.  53.  —  TASMANIANS,  Man  and  Woman. 

["Indigenes  des  deux  sexes  (Tan  Diemen):" — DTJrvtlle,  op.  cit.  "Astrolabe,"  PI.  153;  V,  p.  191] 
Colored  from   original   in   Pekon,    op.    cit.     Compare  Cuviek,  Mammiferes, 
and   the  Atlas  du  Voy.  a  la  recherche  de   la  Pe'rouse,  Nos.   7,   8.      See   other 
examples  in  Captain  Cook's  Voyages,  equally  disagreeable. 

In  the  parallel  line  of  out  Tableau  is  a  skull  from  the  Mortonian  collection 
upon  which  Dr.  Meigs  has  enlarged  (Chapter  III,  Fig.  78).  I  was  with  the  late 
Dr.  Morton  when  he  received  this  specimen,  and  saw  him  note  in  his  MS. 
Catalogue  (Hid  ed.,  1849,  No.  1327),  that  this  "skull  is  the  nearest  approach 
to  the  orang  type  that  I  have  seen." 

More  than  20  years  previously,  Dumont  d'UnviLLE  ("Astrolabe,"  182G-9, 
—I,  p.  403)  thus  describes,  on  the  spot,  the  hideousness  of  these,  now  all  but 
extinct,  types  of  mankind: — "Plusieurs  ont  les  machoires  tres-proeminentes, 
et  l'un  d'eux,  nomme  le  vieux  Wirang,  eut  fort  bien  pu  passer  pour  un  Orang- 
outang." 

I  believe  that  our  ETHNOGRAPHIC  TABLEAU  establishes  what 
Baron  de  Humboldt  has  so  eloquently  deprecated  —  and  Count  de 
Gobineau  so  strongly  insists  upon — viz.:  the  existence  of  superior 
and  inferior  races. 

In  these  last  two  specimens  of  Nature's  handicraft  upon  Prof. 
Owen's  "sole  representative  of  his  [man's]  order,"  we  have  reached 
the  lowest. 

But,  inasmuch  as  within  the  "Australian  Realm,"  amidst  other 
zoological  anomalies,  the  Orang-utan  has  never  existed,  I  proceed, 
in  my  final  section,  to  examine  where  some  of  the  highest  simix 
and  some  inferior  types  of  the  "genus  homo"  may  happen  to  find 
themselves  in  geographical  contact. 


638  EXPLANATIONS    OF    M  0  N  K  E  Y-C  H  A  R  T  . 


section  n. 

ON   THE   GEOGRAPHICAL  DISTRIBUTION  OF   THE  SIHIJE   IN    RELATION   TO 
THAT   OF   SOME   INFERIOR  TYPES  OF  MEN. 

(With  a  Map  containing  54  Monkeys,  and  6  human  portraits.) 

"  The  monkeys  are  entirely  tropical.  But  here  again  we  notice  a  very 
intimate  adaptation  of  their  types  to  the  particular  continents ;  as  the  mon- 
keys of  tropical  America  constitute  a  family  altogether  distinct  from  the 
monkeys  of  the  old  world,  there  being  not  one  species  of  any  of  the  genera 
of  Quadrumana,  so  numerous  on  this  continent,  found  either  in  Asia  or  Africa. 
The  monkeys  of  the  Old  World,  again,  constitute  a  natural  family  by  them- 
selves, extending  equally  over  Africa  and  Asia ;  and  there  is  even  a  close 
representative  analogy  between  those  of  different  parts  of  these  two  conti- 
nents—  the  orangs  of  Africa,  the  Chimpanzee  and  Gorilla,  corresponding  to 
the  red  orang  of  Sumatra  and  Borneo,  and  the  smaller  long-armed  species  of 
continental  Asia.  And  what  is  not  a  little  remarkable,  is  the  fact  that  the 
black  orang  occurs  upon  that  continent  which  is  inhabited  by  the  black 
human  race,  while  the  brown  orang  inhabits  those  parts  of  Asia  over  which 
the  chocolate-colored  Malays  have  been  developed."  (Agassiz.)  598 

I  first  read  the  above  paragraph  at  Portland,  Maine, — where 
chance  threw  me  in  the  way  of  Prof.  Agassiz,  within  a  week  or  two 
after  its  publication. 

Time  passed  away.  I  was  then  occupied  with  other  pursuits ; 
until,  in  March  1853,  another,  to  myself  most  welcome,  chance 
again  cast  us  together  as  fellow-travellers  by  car  and  steam-boat  from 
Atlanta,  Ga.,  to  Mobile,  Ala.;  —  the  Professor  to  deliver  a  course 
of  Lectures  at  the  latter  city, — myself  to  continue,  at  our599  "  ritiro" 
over  that  bay,  those  studies  which  resulted  in  the  issue,  one  year 
afterwards,  of  the  precursory  volume  to  the  present. 

Distance,  and  my  own  avocations,  precluded  my  enjoying  the 
advantage  of  listening  to  more  than  three  of  those  six  discourses 
which  will,  for  a  long  time,  render  the  Professor's  name  a  "  house- 
hold word"  among  Mobilians;  but,  I  made  it  a  point  to  attend  the 
last;  inasmuch  as  Prof.  Agassiz  had  kindly  forewarned  Dr.  Nott 
and  myself,  that  this  lecture  was  to  be  "  for  you."  Pencil  and  note- 
book in  hand,  I  went  prepared  to  take  down  some  memoranda  for 
individual  reminiscence :  but,  very  few  minutes  elapsing  before,  en- 
tranced, so  to  say,  by  his  easy  flow  of  language  and  swiftness  of 
black-board  demonstration,  whilst  uncoiling  a  chain  of  facts,  in 
Natural  Histoiy,  such  as  no  other  man  can  link  together  through  an 

598  Christian  Examiner,  Boston,  July,  1850:  —  Types  of  Mankind,  p.  75. 
539  Capt.  Howard's  —  Daphne,  Mobile  Bay  —  where  Mrs.  Gliddon,  our  little  boy  and  my- 
self, enjoyed  for  many  months  a  most  delightful  residence. 


EXPLANATIONS    OF     MONKEY- CHART.  639 

equal  number  of  English  words, — what  I  heard  became  photographed 
upon  the  leaves  of  memory  instead  of  being  scribbled  simultaneously 
upon  paper;  and,  next  day,  I  re-crossed  the  bay,  ....  to  muse. 
This  was  ou  the  13th  April,  1853. 

On  the  14th  idem,  some  gifted  penman  (unknown  to  me  even  by 
name,  although  known  to  Dr.  Nott)  published  "  The  Lecture  of 
Agassiz"600  in  a  form,  —  as  to  mere  verbal  utterance  condensed,  but 
as  to  accuracy  of  fact  so  extraordinary  (even  to  a  "  lecturer"  blase  like 
myself) — that  I  feel  it  to  be  no  injustice  to  Prof.  Agassiz  to  subjoin 
a  citation,  just  as  if  the  "reporter's"  phraseology  had  been  literally 
his  own :  — 

"  My  own  views  on  this  subject  differ  widely  from  those  of  others,  who  have  before  main- 
tained an  original  diversity  of  races.  In  my  opinion  not  only  did  different  races,  or  types 
of  mankind,  as  the  five  races,  so  called,  have  a  distinct  origin, — but  each  distinct  nationality, 
which  has  played  an  important  part  in  history,  had  a  separate  origin.  Men  were  created 
in  nations.™1  *  *  *  If  there  was  such  a  community  of  origin  among  men,  why  had  each 
region  peculiar  animals, — why  did  they  not  transmit  the  same  domestic  animals  which  they 
had  already  subdued  ?  On  the  contrary,  these  animals  are  as  distinct  as  the  races  among 
whom  they  were  found.  *  *  *  If  then  we  compare  the  physical  facts  in  respect  to  the 
different  races  —  giving  each  its  proper  value  —  if  we  consider  that  in  the  earliest,  times, 
different  languages  were  in  simultaneous  use — as  unlike  as  the  notes  of  different  species  of 
animals ;  if  we  regard  the  subject  of  hybridity  in  all  its  bearings,  allowing  the  dissimi- 
larity of  species  in  animals  in  different  localities  its  proper  weight,  we  shall  be  drawn 
inevitably  towards  the  conclusion  of  a  diversity  of  origin  and  separate  centres  of  creation. 
*  *  *  Diversity  has  marks  and  evidence  of  plan  and  gradation  among  races  as  among 
animals.  "We  find  an  original  physical  type  distinguishing  the  races,  at  the  same  time 
showing  a  community  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest. 

"  There  is  no  such  resemblance  between  the  ape  and  man.  Animality  and  humanity  are 
entirely  distinct.  While,  then,  there  are  traits  of  resemblance  between  the  colored  races 
and  these  animals,  they  never  could  have  arisen  from  apes.  But  we  see  in  the  races  a 
gradation  parallel  to  the  gradations  of  animals  up  to  man.  Vet  the  colored  races,  though 
separated  from  animals  entirely,  in  many  traits  resemble  them  more  than  they  do  the 
highest  types  of  man.  The  inferior  races,  by  successive  gradations,  are  linked  to  a  higher 
humanity.  How  could  climatic  influences  produce  these  results?  How  could  all  physical 
causes  combined  ?  It  would  be  to  make  an  accident  produce  a  logical  result ;  in  short,  an 
absurdity. 

"  In  the  whole  world  of  life  we  find  this  gradation.  It  is  not  alone  in  the  animal  kingdom 
as  it  now  exists,  but  in  the  antecedent  ages,  as  far  back  as  the  oldest  fossils,  we  see  the  same 
distinct  order  and  gradation ;  and  we  find  evidence  that,  in  those  early  ages,  a  plan  was 
already  laid  out :  we  find  the  first  expression  of  the  same  thought  developed  in  the  succes- 
sive structures  of  all  animals  and  plants." 

The  next  enlargement  (known  to  me)  of  this  fundamental  idea 
occurs  in  Prof.  Agassiz's  "Provinces  of  the  Animal  World."603 

"The  East  Indian  realm  is  now  very  well  known  zoologically,  thanks  to  the  efforts  of 
English  and  Dutch  naturalists ;   and  may  be  subdivided  into  three  fauna;,  that  of  Dukhun, 

«»  Mobile  Daily  Tribune,  April  14,  1853. 

601  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  74,  82. 

602  Op.  cit.,  p.  lxxi-ii. 


640  EXPLANATIONS    OF    HON  KEY- CHART. 

that  of  the  Indo-Chinese  peninsula,  and  that  of  the  Sunda  Islands,  Borneo,  and  the  Philip- 
pines. Its  characteristic  animals,  represented  in  the  seventh  column  of  our  Tableau,  may 
be  readily  contrasted  with  those  of  Africa.  There  is,  however,  one  feature  in  this  realm 
which  requires  particular  attention,  and  has  a  high  importance  with  reference  to  the  study 
of  the  races  of  men.  "We  find  here  upon  Borneo  (an  island  not  so  extensive  as  Spain)  one 
of  the  best  known  of  those  anthropoid  monkeys,  the  orang-outan ;  and  with  him  as  well  as 
upon  the  adjacent  islands  of  Java  and  Sumatra,  and  along  the  coasts  of  the  two  East  Indian 
peninsula,  not  less  than  ten  other  different  species  of  Hylobates,  the  long-armed  monkeys, 
—  a  genus  which,  next  to  the  orang  and  chimpanzee,  ranks  nearest  to  man.  One  of  these 
species  is  circumscribed  within  the  island  of  Java,  two  along  the  coast  of  Coromandel,  three 
upon  that  of  Malacca,  and  four  upon  Borneo.  Also,  eleven  of  the  highest  organized  beings 
which  have  performed  their  part  in  the  plan  of  the  creation  within  tracts  of  land  inferior 
in  extent  to  the  range  of  any  of  the  historical  nations  of  men!  In  accordance  with  this 
fact,  we  find  three  distinct  races  within  the  boundaries  of  the  East  Indian  realm:  the 
Telingan  race  in  anterior  India,  the  Malays  in  posterior  India  and  upon  the  islands,  upon 
which  the  Negrillos  occur  with  them.  Such  combinations  justify  fully  a  comparison  of  the 
geographical  range  covered  by  distinct  European  nations  with  the  narrow  limits  occupied 
upon  earth  by  the  orangs,  the  chimpanzees,  and  the  gorillas ;  and  though  I  still  hesitate  to 
assign  to  each  an  independent  origin  (perhaps  rather  from  the  difficulty  of  divesting  myself 
of  the  opinions  universally  received,  than  from  any  intrinsic  evidence),  I  must,  in  presence 
of  these  facts,  insist  at  least  upon  the  probability  of  such  an  independence  of  origin  of  all 
nations ;  or,  at  least,  of  the  independent  origin  of  a  primitive  stock  for  each,  with  which 
at  some  future  period  migrating  or  conquering  tribes  have  more  or  less  completely  amal- 
gamated, as  in  the  case  of  mixed  nationalities." 

It  may  well  be  supposed  that  repeated  assertions  like  the  above, 
proceeding  from  such  an  authority,  stimulated  the  curiosity,  to  say 
the  least,  of  an  archeologue  towards  their  verification. 

As  in  the  discovery  of  Lake  Moeris  by  my  old  friend  and  colleague 
Linant-Bey,603  this  leading  idea  continued  to  float  in  my  mind — "  sans 
pouvoir  m'arreter  a  une  conception  satisfaisaute,  lorsqu'enfin  une 
circonstance  presque  fortuite  determina  en  moi  avec  precision  une 
pensee  qui  s'y  agitait  depuis  long-temps  d'une  maniere  confuse." 

This  circumstance  was  my  departure  hence  for  Europe,  in  October, 
1854,  with  the  view  of  collecting  materials  for  the  present  volume. 
I  reasoned  with  myself  that,  if  such  be  the  facts  in  zoological  organ- 
ism, the  "proper  study  of  mankind"  will  have  to  be  commenced  da 
capo.  "With  no  hostile  intent,  but  with  a  sort  of  constitutional 
impulse  to  eradicate  error, — as  Bacon  says,  "the  traveller  cuts  down 
a  bramble  in  passing"  —  I  have  subjected  Prof.  Agassiz's  theory  to 
an  archaeologist's  experimentum  crucis. 

He  will  be  the  first  to  acknowledge  that  the  earliest  notice  he  had 
of  any  such  intention  on  my  part,  was  the  reception,  at  Cambridge, 
last  October  (1856),  of  a  lithographic  and  uncolored  proof  of  the 
annexed  "Monkey-chart," — which,  together  with   those   of  some 

603  Memoire  sur  le  Lac  Maris,  prSsente  et  lu  a  la  Sociele  Egyptienne  [founded  at  Cairo,  1886, 
by  himself,  Alfred  S.  Walne,  James  Trail,  Peter  Taylor,  and  myself] ;  Alexandrie,  4to, 
1843,  p.  18 


s 


A   U    S 


21 


/At 


/Sfl 


CHART  ILLUSTRATIVE  OFTHE  GEOGRAPHICAL  DISTRIBUTION  OF  M  Dt         .  IN  THEIR  RELATION  TO  THAT  OF  SOME  INFERIOR  TYPES  Of  MEN. 


EXPLANATIONS    OF     MONKEY-CHART.  641 

otters  of  our  plates,  and  a  prospectus  of  this  volume,  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  enclosing  to  him. 

On  the  15th  of  the  same  month,  during  a  brief  interview  in  his 
library,  Prof.  Agassiz  pointed  out  to  me  two  errors  in  this  chart,  viz. : 
first  (since  corrected),  that  I  had  placed  the  habitat  of  the  chimpanzee 
(E"o.  3)  too  far  to  the  south  in  Africa ;  and  second  (which  I  have  not 
altered),  that,  in  America,  the  black  line  of  circumvallation  inclosing 
all  the  species  "simiae"  is  carried  too  much  towards  the  north. 

Notwithstanding  the  enormous  pressure  of  his  engagements, — 
increased  as  they  are  by  the  production  of  a  work,  as  honorable  to 
his  science  as  unexampled  in  the  annals  of  our  common  republic  for 
the  popular  support  it  so  deservedly  receives  —  Prof.  Agassiz  was  so 
complaisant  as  to  say :  "  If  I  have  time,  I  will  send  you  a  letter  upon 
this  subject."  Well, —  time  or  no  time  —  that  letter  came,  to  the 
extreme  gratification  of  Dr.  ISTott  and  myself;  and  the  reader  has 
already  found  it  in  our  "  Prefatory  Remarks"  {supra,  pp.  13-15). 
Everything  that  follows  hereinafter  rests  exclusively  upon  my  indi- 
vidual responsibility. 


DESCRIPTION  OF  MONKEY-CHART  — NOTES  AND  REFERENCES. 

The  map  itself  lias  been  drawn  to  the  convenient  scale  of  my  friend  Dr.  Bottom's  admi- 
rable Carte  physique  el  meleorologique  du  Globe  Terrestre.mi  The  black  line,  surrounding 
all  those  regions  where  monkeys  are  found,  has  been  traced  chiefly  in  accordance  with  the 
geographical  distribution  of  Schmarda,605 — compared  with  that  of  Berghaus,606  of  Keith 
Johnston,60'  of  Petermann,608  of  Humboldt,609  and  of  another  anonymous  geographer.610 

Of  the  54  figures  of  the  monkeys  themselves,  41  have  been  borrowed  from  the  plate  of 
J.  Achille  Compte;611  and  the  remaining  13  copied,  at  our  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences 
of  Philadelphia,  by  my  wife, — to  whom  the  tinted  original  given  as  pattern  to  the  colorist 
is  also  due.  The  reference  to  each  figure  indicates  the  source  whence  such  colors  were  de- 
rived.   Independently  of  these  works,  and  those  cited  previously  (supra,  Chap. V,pp. 459-65), 

6M  3me  edition,  chez  Andriveau-Goujon,  Paris,  1855. 

605  tlbersichlskarte  der  geographischen  Verbreilung  der  Thiere,  Wien,  8vo,  1853,  vol.  iii. 

606  Physikalischer  Atlas,  "  Geographie  der  Thiere,"  Band  II,  PI.  1;  Text,  pp.  137-8; 
Gotha,  1848. 

607  Physical  Atlas,  "Geographical  division  and  distribution  of  the  Simicc  and  Prosimice;" 
and  D  3,  pp.  2-8,  Edinburgh,  fol.,  1848. 

608  Atlas  of  Physical  Geography,  "Zoological  map,  Mammifers,"  PI.  11,  London,  4to, 
1852. 

609  Bromme's  "Atlas  zu  A.  v.  Humboldt's  Kosmos," — Geographischen  Verbreilung  der 
vorziiglicheren  Saugthiere  auf  der  Erde,  Stuttgart,  1851,  PI.  32. 

^"Zoological  map  showing  the  distribution  of  Animals  over  the  World,  London,  Reynolds, 
1854. 

611  Regne  animal  de  M.  le  Baron  Cuvier  dispose  en  Tableaux  mcthodiques,  Paris,  fol.,  1832. 

41 


642 


EXPLANATIONS    OF     MONKEY-CHART. 


D'Obbigny,612  Hughes,613  and  especially  Schinz.614  have  been  consulted.  And  here  I  may 
remark  that,  while  all  these  invaluable  books  adorn  the  library  of  our  Academy,  I  have 
gratefully  enjoyed,  in  common  with  others,  the  benefit  of  Dr.  Thos.  B.  Wilson's  munificence 
towards  this  home  of  the  Natural  Sciences. 

I  proceed  to  catalogue  the  series  exhibited  on  our  "  Monkey-chart;"  after  indicating  to 
the  reader  that,  as  each  figure  is  accompanied  by  its  number,  all  that  is  necessary,  in  order 
to  find  its  centre  of  creation  in  geographical  distribution,  is  to  look  at  the  corresponding 
number  on  the  map  itself. 


SIM1M    ORBIS    ANTIQTJI,    C  AT  ARRHIN.2E. 


No.  1.  —  Troglodytes  Gorilla. 

[Rousseau  et  Deveria.  Photographie  ZooJogique, 
Paris,  Mus.  d'Hist.  Nat.,  1854,  PI.  XIII  — 
"  individu  aduite  envoye  du  Gabon  par  M.  le 
Dr.  Franquet,  1852 :" — colored  by  directions 
in  Gervais,  I,  p.  28.] 

2.  —  Troglodytes  niger, 

[Lesson,  Jllitstrations  de  Zoologie,  PI.  32.] 

3.  —  Simia  Satyrns. 

[Chentj,  PI.  4,  "pose  naturelle:"  colored  by 
Wagner,  PI.  I.] 

4.  —  Hylobates  syndactylus, 
[P.  Coveer,  Mammiftres,  PI.  III.] 

5.  —  Hylobates  albimanus. 
[Audebert,  Singes,  I,  PI.  2.] 

6.  —  Hylobates  Hoolock. 

[Chenu,  Pig.  52,  pp.  63-4 :  —  Jardine,  Nat.  Lib. 
PI.  3.] 

7.  —  Hylobates  Leuciscus. 
[Schreber,  Saugtliiere,  Tab.  Ill,  B.] 

8.  —  Hylobates  funereus. 

[Waqner,  p.  18  :  —  Archiv.  du  Mus.,  V,  p.  532, 
Tab.  2(5.] 

9. — -Hylobates  agilis. 
[Gervais,  p.  54:  —  Jardine,  pp.  109-14,  PI.  5.] 

10.  —  Colobus  Guereza. 
TRUppei,  WerUthiere,  II,  Tab.  1.] 

11. —  Colobus  polycomos. 
[Schreber,  X,  D.] 

12.  —  Semnopitheeus  Entellus. 
[Audebert,  Singes,  PI.  IT.] 


No.  13.  —  Cercopithecus  ruber. 
[Schreber,  XVI,  B.] 

14.  —  Cercopithecus  Faiums. 
[Schreber,  XII.] 

15.  —  Cercopithecus  pygerythrus. 
[Cuvier,  Mammiferes,  "  Vervet."] 

16.  —  Cercopithecus  Mona. 
[Audebert,  IV,  2,  rig.  7.] 

17.  —  Cercopithecus  cephus. 
[Audebert,  IV,  2,  fig.  12.] 

18-  —  Cercopithecus  nictitans. 
[Audebert,  IV,  1,  fig.  2.] 

19.  —  Semnopitheeus  comatus. 
[Schbeber,  XXIV,  A.] 

20. — Macacus  aureus. 

[Zoologie  de  la  "Bonite,"  PI.  2.] 

21.  —  Macacus  silenus. 
[Audebert,  II,  1,  fig.  3.] 

22. — Macacus  nemestrinus. 
[F.  Cuvier,  Mam.,  XIII.] 

23.  —  Macacus  Rhesus. 
[Audebert,  II,  1,  fig.  ].] 

24.  —  Macacus  Maimon. 

[F.  Cuvier,  Mam.} 

25.  —  Macacus  eeandatus. 
[Audebert,  I,  3,  fig.  1.] 

26.  —  Cynocephalus  sphinx. 
[Schreber,  VI,  or  XIII,  B.] 


612  Dktionnaire  universelle  d'Histoire  Naturelle,  Paris,  1847,  "Quadrimanes,"  X,  pp. 668-70. 

613  Storia  Naturale  delle  Scimie  e  dei  Maki  disposta  con  ordine,  Milano,  fol.,  1822. 

614  Systematischen  Verzekhniz,  &c,  sive  Synopsis  Mammalium,  Solothurn,  8vo,  1844,  vol.  i. 
passim. 


EXPLANATIONS    OF     MONKEY-CHART. 


643 


No.  27. —  Cynocephalus  Hamadryas. 

[Schreber,  X : — Gervais,  V : — Chenu,  fig.  143 : 
—  Fischer,  pp.  35-6 :  —  Wagner,  p.  62: — De 
Blainville,  OsUographie,  p.  23.] 


No.  28- — Cynocephalus  Mormon. 
[Jardine,  PI.  17.] 

29.  —  Cynocephalus  leucophseus. 
[Covier,  Ann.  du  Mus.,  IX,  Tab.  37.] 


SIMIiE    OEBIS    NOV.3I,    PLAIYBHINJE. 


No.  30.  —  Mycetes  ursinus. 

[AUDEBERT,  V,  1,  fig.  1.] 

31.  —  Cebus  robustus. 

[Spix  and  Martins,  PI. "  Thierforruen  des  Trop- 
ischeti  America,"  fig.  12 : — Jardine,  PI.  21.] 

32.  —  Mycetus  barbatus. 

[Spix,  ibid.,  17:  —  Wagner,   Supplement,  I, 
XXV,  D.] 

33. — Ateles  arachnoides. 
[Geoff.,  Ann.  du  Mus.,  XIII,  PI.  9.] 

34. — Ateles  Belzebuth. 
[Schreber,  XXVI,  B.] 

35.  —  Ateles  Paniscus. 
[Jarddte,  PL  XX.] 

36.  —  Cebus  Azara. 

[AUDEBERT,  V,  2,  fig.  1.] 

37.  —  Chrysothrix  sciureus. 
[D'Orbigny,  Voy.,  Mammif.,  PI.  4.] 

38.  —  Pithecia  rufiventer. 
[Aubebert,  VI,  1,  fig.  1.] 

39.  —  Pithecia  melanocephala. 

[Sfe,  Sim.,  PI.  VIII:  — Geoff.,  Ann.,  XIX,  p. 
117.] 

40.  —  Callithrix  personatus. 
[Schreber,  XXX  a.] 

41. — Nyctipithecus  trivirgatus. 
[Jardine,  PI.  XXIV.] 


42.  —  Hapale  Jacchus. 

[Aodebert,  VI,  2,  fig.  4.] 

43.  —  Hapale  penicillata. 
[Wagner,  Suppl.,  XXXIII  a.] 

44.  —  Callithrix  lugens. 
[Jardine,  XXIII.] 

45.  —  Hapale  CEdipus. 
[Aodebert.  VI,  2,  fig.  l.J 

46.  —  Chrysothrix  nigrivittata. 
[Wagner,  XI.] 

47.  —  Hapale  rosalia. 
[Jardine,  XXVIII.] 

48.  —  Lemur  catta. 
[Aodebert,  Maki,  fig.  4.] 

49.  —  Lichanotus  Indri. 
[Audebert,  Indri,  fig.  1.] 

50.  —  Stenops  tardigradus. 
[Audebert,  Loris,  fig.  1.] 

51.  —  Galago  senegalensis. 
[Schreber,  XXXVIII,  B.] 

52.  —  Tarsius  spectrum. 
[Audebert,  fig.  1.] 

53.  —  Inuus  speciosus. 
[Wagner,  Pi.  V.] 

54.  —  Cercocebus  sabaeus. 
[Jardine,  PI.  XIII.] 


But,  that  the  above  54  specimens  comprehend  but  a  very  small 
portion  of  the  varied  "species"  of  Monkeys  already  known,  is  made 
evident  through  the  following  table  from  Wagner: — 6l5 

615  Die  Sdugthiere  in  Abbildungen  nack  der  Nalwr  mil  Beschreibung  en  von  Dr.  Johann  Chris- 
tian D.  von  Schreber,  Leipzig,  -Ito,  1853,  p.  3. 


644 


EXPLANATIONS  OF  MONKEY  CHART. 


Number  of  the  kinds. 


Name  of  Order. 


Known 

in 

1S40. 


Simia  , 

Hylobates 

Semnopithecus 

Colobus 

Cercopithecus 

Inuus 

Cynoeephalus 

Mycetes 

Lagothrix 

Ateles 

Cebus 

Pithecia 

Nyctipithecus 

Callithrix 

Chrysothrix .'. 

Hapale 

Lichanotus 

Habrocebus 

Lemur 

Galeocebus 

Ckirogaleus 

Stenops 

Microcebus 

Perodicticus 

Otolicnus 

Tarsias 

Sum. 


7 
14 

7 
16 
11 

7 

2 


2 
6 
1 
6 
1 
15 
1 


128        210 


Classi- 
fied in 
1852. 


Classi- 
fied since 
1840. 


25 

5 

32 

10 

10 

7 

2 

9 

10 

7 

o 

11 

3 
26 
1 
2 
14 
1 
5 
3 
2 
1 
6 
1 


11 
2 
1 
1 


53 


Hence,  then,  including  additions  since  1852,  we  possess  already 
more  than  216  distinct  animals  of  the  monkey-tribe.  These  are 
thus  classified, — after  a  lament  regarding  the  difficulties  of  systems 
—  by  Gervais: — 616 

"This  first  tribe  of  the  Mammifers  will  be  partitioned,  as  follows,  into  five  secondary 
groups: — 

1st.  — The  ANTHROPOMORPHS  (Anthropomorpha),  comprising  the  genera  Troglodyte, 

Gorilla,  Orang,  and  Gibbon. 
2d.  —  The  SEMNOPITHECI  (Semnopithecians),  divide  themselves  into  Nasio,  Semngpi- 

theoi  properly  so  called,  Presbtte,  and  Colobus. 
3d.  —  The  GUENONS  ( Cercopilhecians),  or  the  genera  Miopithecus,  and  Cercopithecus. 
4th.  —  The  MAC  ACS  (Macadam),  who  partition   themselves   into  Magot,  Mangabet, 

Maimon,  and  Macac. 
5th.  —  CYNOCEPHALI  (Cynocephalians),  or  the  Ctnopitheci,  Mandrills,  Papions,  and 

Theropitheci. 
Of  these  five  groups,  the  third  alone  is  exclusively  African :  the  four  others,  on  the  con- 
trary, have  each  particular  genera  in  America  and  India." 

The  reader's  eye,  following  the  black  line  of  circumvallation  on 
our  "  Chart,"  will  perceive  that,  except  at  Gibraltar  (whither  De 
Blainville 617  considers  the  magot  to  be  an  importation),  there  are  no 

K6  Trois  Rignes  de  la  Nature,  Nammiferes,  V°  partie,  Paris,  4to.,  1854,  p.  12. 
611  Osteographie,  p.  21.     But  see  Gervais,  pp.  95-9. 


EXPLANATIONS    OP    MONKEY    CHART.  645 

monkeys  in  Agassiz's  European  realm, — none  in  the  Polynesian,  nor 
any  in  the  Australian.  In  the  American,  the  Professor  told  me  that 
no  simiae  are  to  be  found  northward  of  the  Isthmus  of  Tehuantepec. 
Prof.  Spencer  F.  Baird,  however,  obligingly  pointed  out  to  me  two 
passages  which  seem  to  leave  the  exact  degree  of  latitude  an  open 
question.618 

But  the  strangest  puzzle  of  all  is,  how  to  explain  the  sharp  line  of 
demarcation  beheld  between  island  and  island,  in  the  Malayan 
realm ;  which  a  great  naturalist  has  forcibly  embodied  in  the  follow- 
ing language : — 619 

"The  [East-Indian]  Archipelago  forms,  as  it  were,  a  world  apart,  as  much  by  its  geo- 
graphical position,  as  by  its  relation  to  ethnography  and  natural  history.  Situate  betwixt 
the  Indian  continent  and  Australia,  the  natural  productions  of  this  maritime  world  resemble, 
for  the  greater  part,  those  of  the  limitrophie  lands ;  and  it  is  there  only  where  the  transition 
pronounces  itself  the  most  distinctly,  where  one  observes  a  small  number  of  peculiar  beings. 
This  line  of  transition  is  marked  by  the  islands  of  Celebes,  Flores,  Timor,  and  Boeroe.  It 
finds  itself,  consequently,  between  the  1 3 5th  and  145th  of  east  longitude  of  the  meridian  of 
Ferro.  At  the  Moluccas,  all  nature  already  wears  an  Australasiatic  (Papou)  character ; 
because,  beyond  some  chiroptera  which  stretch  as  far  as  New  Guinea,  and  the  genus  of 
hogs,  all  the  mammifera  originating  in  that  country  belong  to  the  order  of  the  marsupials 
[every  other  animal  having  been  imported].  *  *  *  *  In  general,  the  botanical  and  zoolo- 
gical character  of  Australia  commences  at  Celebes  and  at  Timor ;  so  that  these  two  islands 
may  be  considered  as  the  limits  of  two  Faunas  altogether  distinct.  *  *  *  *  The  Indian 
Archipelago  divides  itself,  therefore,  in  the  direction  of  west  to  east,  as  concerns  geography 
and  natural  history,  into  two  parts  of  unequal  extension.  The  occidental  part,  which  is 
the  largest,  contains  the  islands  of  Borneo,  Sumbawa,  Java,  Sumatra,  and  the  peninsula  of 
Malacca ;  whereas  the  oriental  portion  contains  but  the  islands  of  an  inferior  order, — those 
of  Celebes,  Flores,  Timor,  Gilolo,  and,  to  take  the  widest  range,  perhaps  even  to  Mindanao." 

Muller  then  goes  on  to  explain  how  those  larger  portions  that  are 
nearest  to  the  Hindostanic  continent  resemble,  in  their  Faunae,  the 
southern  parts  of  India, — -just  as  Maury  {supra,  Chapter  I.)  has  shown 
it  to  be  the  case  with  mankind.  He  counts  about  175  mammifera 
throughout  the  entire  archipelago,  Malacca  and  ISTew  Guinea  inclu- 
sive ;  of  whicb  scarcely  thirty  belong  exclusively  to  the  eastern  side, 
where,  chiroptera  inclusive,  there  are  but  fifty  species  in  all. 

In  this  singular  arrangement  of  nature  within  so  small  an  area, 
and  amid  islands  so  very  proximate,  the  Orangs,  the  Gibbons,  indeed 
all  true  Simiae,  appertain  solely  to  the  western  side ;  and  are  totally 

sis  «  xhe  Monkeys  which  enter  into  the  southern  provinces  of  Mexico  belong  to  the  genera 
mycetes  and  hapale"  (Richardson,  "Report  on  N.  Amer.  Zool." — Brit.  Assoc,  adv.  Science, 
V.  1837,  p.  138):  and  "  apes  in  the  southern  provinces  of  Mexico"  (Wagner,  Bayerischen 
Akade'mie,  Miinchen,  1846,  p.  51.) 

«19  Salomon  Muller,  "  Cosmographie,  Zoologie  compared," — Siebold' 's  Moniteur  des  Indes- 
Orienlales  et  Occidentales,  Batavia,  4to.,  1846-7,  pp.  120-36.  M.  Muller,  as  member  of  the 
Commission  of  Physical  Researches,  spent  in  the  Indian  Archipelago  "  onze  anne"es  des  plus 
belles  de  ma  vie." 


646      EXPLANATIONS  OF  MONKEY  CHART. 

absent  in  the  eastern :  Celebes  and  Timor  being  tbe  most  easterly 
isles  producing  monkeys,  and  these  only  Macacos  and  Cynocephali. 
Hence,  the  anthropoid  apes,  highest  of  the  series,  are  met  with  only 
where  Telingan,  Malay,  and  Negrillo  races  dwell:  neither  tbose,  nor 
even  the  lower  monkey-forms,  being  encountered  amid  the  bomes  of 
Papouas,  Harfoorians, — far  less  of  Australians.  Now,  what  is  essen- 
tially noteworthy,  if  depressions  of  temperature  may  explain  why  the 
natural  limit  of  the  monkey-range  does  not  extend  itself  outside  of 
our  black  line  of  circumvallation  elsewhere,  such  explanation  has  no 
force  here.     Its  cause  is  inherent  in  some  other  law  of  nature. 


HUMAN  HEADS  IN  MONKEY  CHART. 
(Figs.  A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F.) 

Having  sketched,  in  the  preceding  pages,  the  relative  positions  of  54  "species"  of  the 
simiadcc,  out  of  some  216  known,  amid  the  zone  appointed  for  them  by  Nature ;  I  pass 
ouward  in  the  endeavor  to  indicate  to  the  reader,  through  six  human  heads,  the  sort  of  types 
co-resident  with  monkeys  within  the  same  geographical  area.  These  six  heads,  however, 
can  merely  serve  as  mnemonics;  because,  had  space  permitted,  and  did  we  possess  the  por- 
traits of  numberless  races  with  which  we  are  acquainted  solely  through  descriptions,  it 
would  not  have  been  a  difficult  matter  to  draw,  on  the  same  spot  occupied  by  each  quadru- 
mane,  a  bimane  illustrative  of  singular  correspondences ;  and  then  the  eye  could  have  per- 
ceived that  the  colorations  of  the  human  skin,  within  this  self-same  zone,  are  almost  as 
varied,  and  as  diverse  from  each  other,  as  the  forms  and  colors  of  the  monkey  tribes  are 
now  therein  seen  to  be  different.  This  experiment  may,  in  the  future,  be  tried  by  others. 
In  the  meanwhile,  the  letters  placed  beneath  serve  to  indicate  the  habitat  of  each  of  these 
six  individuals,  whose  likenesses  are  very  roughly  traced. 

REFERENCES  AND  EXPLANATIONS. 

A.  —  AMERICAN.     ' '  Puru-PuriV'  nation. 

[Spis  and  Hartids,  Seise  in  Brazilien: —  colored  by  De  Castelnad,  AmhHqiie  du  Sud,  "PI.  XIX. 
CJdotat/.  fameux  chef  de  Cherentes  qui  a  long  temps  desole'  la  province  de  Goyaz.  *  *  *  II  etait 
anthropopbage."] 

To  convince  oneself  of  the  untold  varieties  of  these  South  American  races, — 
see  De  Castelnait  (passim) ;  Augt.  St.  Hilaire  (Rio  de  Janeiro,  I,  pp.  421-7 ; 

II,  pp.  49-57,  137-231);  D'Okbignt  (Voy.,  Atlas);  Debret  ( Voy.  Pittor.  an 
PrSsil,  fol.,  Paris,  1834,  II,  and  plates) ; — especially  Rugendas  (Voy.  Pittor.  au 
Bresil,  transl.  Golberry,  Paris,  fol.,  1833,  II,  "portraits  et  costumes,"  pp.  2-34) ; 
and  Darwin,  Wilson,  and  Fitzroy  [Surveying  Voyages  of  H.  M.  S.  "  Adventure" 
and  "Eeagle"  —  London,  8vo,  1829  — II,  pp.  129-82;  appendix,  pp.  135-49; 

III,  pp.  519-33). 

B.  —  WEST  AFRICAN.      ' '  Negre  de  la  cdte  d'  Or"  —  in  Brazil. 

[CHORIS,  op.  cit.,  liv.  7™«,  PI.  VI :  —  colored  by  descriptions  in  RDGENDAS... 
See  Chapter  V,  supra,  pp.  545-6. 


EXPLANATIONS    OF     MONKEY     CHART.  647 

C. — EAST  AFRICAN.      "Mozambique"  negro,  in  Brazil. 

[Deuret,  op.  cit.,  II,  PL  37  —  "  differentes  nations  negres,"  fig.  8 :  —  colored  from  his  descriptions 
(pp.  114-15);  as  compared  -with  some  of  De  Froberville's  casts,  and  with  Choris's  accounts,  liv. 
1",  pi.  Ill,  4c] 

Salt  [Voyage  to  Abyssinia,  London,  4to,  1814,  pp.  33-41)  spoke  about  the 
Monjou  negroes  on  that  coast  as  "  of  the  ugliest  description,  having  high  cheek- 
bones, thick  lips,  small  knots  of  woolly  hair  like  peppercorns  on  their  heads, 
and  skins  of  a  deep,  shining  black:"  and  again,  that  the  Makooa,  Makooana, 
•who  are  negroes,  and  not  Kaffrs  (an  Arabic  term,  only  meaning  "infidel"),  whilst 
possessing  excessive  deformity,  and  ferocity  of  visage  and  characters,  did  not 
possess  any  name  for  "God"  except  wherimb,  meaning  the  "sky,"  —  any  more 
than  did  the  Monjous  themselves,  among  whom  "molungo"  signified  both  God 
and  sky.     Compare  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  609-10. 

D.  — SOUTH  AFRICAN.     "  Hottentot  Venus." 

[From  a  photograph  by  M.  Rousseau — Gaterie  Anthropologique,  Paris — of  her  colored  full-size  cast 
in  that  Museum.] 

Compare  her  portraits  in  Cuvier's  fol.  Mammiflres ;  and  my  remarks,  supra. 
pp.  628-9. 

E.  —  MALAYAN.     "  Serebis  Dyak." 

[Marrtatt,  Borneo  and  the  Indian  Archipelago,  London  8vo,  1848,  PI.  79 : — tinted  "  copper-colored." 
op.  cit.,  pp.  5,  78.] 

My  brother  William,  long  stationed  at  Sarawak  (supra,  p.  635),  tells  me  that 
it  is  an  excellent  sample. 

F.  —  "  BISAYA  sauvage,  ou  des  montagnes." 

[Mallat,  Philippines,  Atlas.6**] 

Compare  the  observations  of  Chamisso  (in  Von  Kotzebtje's  Voy.  "Rurick," 
II,  pp.  351-98) ;  and  of  Lesson  and  Garnot  (in  Duperret,  Voy.  "  CoquilK" 
Paris,  8vo.,  1826;   "Zoologie,"  I,  pp.  8-106). 

620  The  homines  caudati  have  been  already  treated  upon  (supra,  Chap.  V,  pp.  458-9  notes 
183-4).  Mallat  (Les  Philippines,  p.  129)  neither  believes  in  them,  nor  in  the  reported 
unions  between  human  and  anthropoid  genera ;  on  which  Blumenbach  (De  Generis  Humam 
varietate,  p.  16)  indignantly  wrote  "  Hybrida  humana  negantur,"  while  Vjrey  (Hist.  Nalurellc 
du  Genre  Humain,  1824,  III,  p.  491,  &c.  &c.)  denies  that  such  experiment  has  been  fairly 
tried. 

Had  not  an  account  of  the  "  Onmg-Kubu,"  and  of  the  "Orang-Gugur,"  been  read  before 
the  American  Geographical  and  Statistical  Society  of  New  York,  and  received  the  Society's 
"imprimatur"  in  pamphlet  form  (Report  "on  the  East  Indian  Archipelago;  and  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  Wild  Races  of  men,"  New  York,  1854),  I  should  have  as  little  dared  to  refer  to 
Capt.  Walter  M.  Gibson's  most  enchanting  adventures  (The  Prison  of  Welteverden;  and  a 
glance  at  the  East  Indian  Archipelago,  New  York,  1855,  pp.  120-3,  180-2),  as  to  have  cited, 
on  African  questions,  my  friend  Mr.  Brantz  Mayer's  entertaining  "Captain  Canot."  As 
it  is,  the  responsibility  of  publication,  in  the  former  case,  reposes  entirely  upon  la  critique 
of  the  honorable  historians,  divines,  lawyers,  doctors,  and  merchant-princes,  who  in  council 
assembled  to  hear  the  Captain's  eloquent  address,  on  the  24th  March,  1855,  at  the  New 
York  University.  As  I  receive  it,  so  I  pass  it  on :  with  the  mere  remark  that,  the  authentic 
descriptions  science  possesses  of  real  men — -the  Orang-benua,  to  wit  —  in  Malayana,  have, 
quite  sufficiently  for  my  anthropoid  analogies,  brought  down  humanity,  in  that  Archipelago, 
to  a  grade  not  many  removes  from  the  rubescent  Orang-utans ;  so  that,  should  Mr.  P.  T- 
Barnum  ever  be  so  lucky  as  to  import  for  his  Museum  a  live  specimen  of  the  genus  "  Oiang  " 
(Malayice  man),  like  that  one  figured  by  Capt.  Gibson  in  wood-cut  on  page  180,  I  shall 
thankfully  accept, — just  as  I  should  be  equally  glad  to  see  one  of  M.  d'ABBADiE's  "  Dokkos  " 
(Prichard,  Nat.  Hist.,  p.  306)  —  such  a  wonderful  "confirmation"  (not  to  mention  also 
sundry  dwarf  "  Aztec  children")  par  dessus  le  marcM. 


648  EXPLANATIONS     OF     M  0  N  K  E  T-C  H  A  R  T. 


FINAL     OBSERVATIONS. 

Thus,  I  think,  we  have  ascertained  that,  in  Continental  Asia,  Africa 
and  America, — leaving  aside  Madagascar — no  less  than  amidst  the 
thousand  islands  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  there  are  scattered 
immense  numbers,  and  many  varieties,  of  Monkeys ;  that,  in  some 
places,  different  "species"  occupy  contiguous  habitats,  whilst  their 
specific  analogues  are  only  met  with  at  very  remote  distances ;  that, 
no  two  tracts  of  mountain  or  valley,  hardly  two  islands,  possess  the 
same  "species"  of  Monkey;  in  short,  no  spot  within  the  Tropical 
zones,  however  circumscribed  in  area,  which  does  not,  if  it  has  any 
at  all,  possess  its  own  simia  or  simise;  and,  finally,  that  such  "  species" 
is  rarely  to  be  found  anywhere  else.  This  (if  recollection  serves)  is 
the  substance  of  what  I  learned  from  Prof.  Agassiz's  memorable  6th 
lecture,  delivered  at  Mobile. 

Now,  does  any  naturalist  claim  that  each  "  species "  of  monkey 
was  not  created  within  the  particular  province,  zone,  focus,  or  centre, 
where  we  find  it?  "Will  any  naturalist  hazard  a  denial  that  such 
monkeys  were  therein  created,  not  in  single  pair,  but  in  "nations"  ? 
On  ascending  to  Man,  viewed  as  the  "  sole  representative  of  his 
order,"  after  taking  the  preceding  survey  of  his  more  or  less  anthropo- 
morphous precursors, — whether  in  relative  palseontological  epochas, 
or  in  respective  station  at  a  given  link  of  the  spiral  chain  of  beings — 
is  it,  I  would  inquire,  by  accident  that  the  highest  approximations  to 
the  human  form  dwell  closely  along  the  Equmoxial  line,  almost  in 
antipodean  juxtaposition, — viz.,  the  red  orang-utans,  with  black  and 
brown  gibbons,  in  Malayana,  and  the  black  gorillas  and  chimpanzees 
in  Africa  ? 

And,  is  it  again  through  accident,  I  ask,  that  the  converse  of  this 
proposition  is  true,  viz  :  that  the  lowest  forms  of  mankind  in  Africa, 
as  well  as  the  lowest  forms  of  mankind  in  Malayana,  vegetate,  to 
this  day,  precisely  where  the  highest,  most  anthropoid,  types  of  the 
monkey  "species"  respectively  reside? 

Others  may  believe  in  "  accident."  I  do  not, — where  nature  mani- 
fests to  my  reason  such  harmonies  in  the  action  of  Creative  Power. 

Still,  notwithstanding  my  own  belief  in  a  CREATOR,  there  are 
such  things  —  things  which  the  brothers  Humboldt  suspected  and 
rejected — as  "  myths,  fiction,  and  pretended  tradition."  All  animals, 
Man  inclusive,  are  said  to  have  spread  themselves  over  this  planet's 
superficies,  during  the  last  (2348-1857)  4205  years,  dating  from  the 


EXPLANATIONS     OF     M  0  N  K  E  T-C  II  A  R  T.  649 

period  when  Noah's  Ark  grounded  upon  Mount  Ararat,  in  Armenia, 
whose  geographical  position  and  altitude  are  well  known.621 

By  way  of  archfeological  experiment,  under  the  generally  accepted 
hypothesis  that  the  parents  of  all  these  simise  descended,  peripateti- 
cally  along  that  mountain,  and  genealogically  from  that "  single  pair," 
what  species  of  monkey  now  extant  is  the  one  which  is  most  likely 
to  satisfy  the  conditions  required  ? 

Premising  that  such  an  unique  couple622  must  have  travelled  down 
that  mountain  with  amazing  celerity,623  in  order  to  attain  warmer 
latitudes,  and  in  quest  of  food  and  a  home,  —  it  is  only  the  Cyno- 
eephalus  ITamadryas62>  that  fulfils  every  necessary  requirement.  His 
present  habitat — Arabia,  and  perhaps  Persia — is  the  nearest  in  geo- 
graphical approximation  to  Mount  Ararat;  and  we  know  that  he 
lived  thereabouts,  near  Mesopotamia,  as  far  back  as  b.  c.  885 ;  because 
his  effigy  is  sculptured  on  the  Obelisk  of  Nirnrood,625  assigned  by 
Rawlinson  to  that  date,  under  the  reign  of  Jehu.626  I  propose,  there- 
fore, that  a  male  and  female  "pair"  of  the  "species"  Cynocephalus 
Ramadryas  [No.  27]  be  henceforward  recognized  as  the  anthropoid 
analogues  of  "Noah,  Shem,  Ham  and  Japheth ;"  and  that  it  must  be 
from  these  two  individuals  that,  owing  to  transplantation,  together 
with  the  combined  action  of  aliment  and  climate,  the  54  monkeys 
represented  on  our  chart  have  originated.  It  is,  notwithstanding, 
sufficiently  strange,  that,  under  such  circumstances,  this  "primordial 
organic  type"  of  monkey  should  have  so  highly  improved  in  G-uinea 
and  in  Malayana  as  to  become  Gorillas  and  Chimpanzees,  Orangs  and 
Gibbons;  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  the  descendants  of  "Adam  and 
Eve"  have,  in  the  same  localities,  actually  deteriorated  into  the  most 
degraded  and  abject  forms  of  humanity. 

62i  See  above,  Chapter  V,  pp.  572-3. 

622  The  Kopiiim,  apes  [supra,  V,  note  341],  are  not  mentioned  in  Hebrew  writings  until 
the  recent  manipulation  of  Kings  and  Chronicles  by  the  Esdraic  school.    Being  always  "un- 
clean "  to  the  Israelites  and  Mussulmans,  however  dear  to  the  Brahmans,  monkeys  must ' 
have  been  taken  into  the  Ark  "two  and  two"  (Genesis,  VII,  9);  and  not  "by  sevens" 
(ibid.,  verse  2). 

623  They  are  celebrated  for  their  agility,  and  are  the  only  "  species  "  trained  in  the  Levant 
for  gymnastic  and  dancing  exhibitions. 

624  Supra  sub  voce:  —  Ainsworth  (Researches  in  Assyria,  Babylonia  and  Chaldma,  London, 
8vo,  1838,  p.  37)  observes,  "The  monkey,  whose  country  begins  about  38°  N.  lat.,  is  un- 
known in  Assyria  and  Babylonia;  but  it  is  not  certain  if  it  is  not  an  extinct  animal,  for  an 
able  Hebrew  scholar  has  stated  to  me,  that  the  doleful  creatures  which  are  prophetically 
announced  as  tenanting  fallen  Babylon,  ought  to  be  read  as  monkeys  or  baboons." 

625  Latakd's  folio  Monuments,  1849;  and  his  Nineveh  and  its  Remains,  1848;  contain 
accurate  copies  of  this  monument.  For  the  archaeology  of  various  monkeys,  see  De  Blain- 
vtlle  (Osteographie,  pp.  28-49),  and  Gervais  (op.  cit.,  pp.  107-8). 

626  Types  of  Mankind,  pp.  701-2. 


650  EXPLANATIONS    OF    THE    TABLEAU". 

In  bidding  farewell  to  the  reader,  I  would  invite  his  attention  to 
one  more  singularity,  and  to  one  now  established  fact,  suggested  by 
inspection  of  this  Monkey-chart,  viz  : — 

1.  That,  within  the  black  circumvallating  line  which  surrounds  the 
zone  occupied  by  the  simise,  no  "civilization"  —  except  possibly  in 
Central  America  and  Peru — has  ever  been  spontaneously  developed 
since  historical  times. 

Europe,  since  the  ages  of  fossil  remains  (supra,  Chapter  V,  pp.  52-3 
-4),  has  not  contained  any  monkeys,  save  a  few  apes  imported  from 
the  African  side  to  skip  about  Gibraltar  rock.  The  line  runs  south 
of  Carthage,  Cyrene,  Egypt-proper,  Palestine,  Mesopotamia,  Ariana, 
and  China.  We  know  that  Hindostanic  "civilization"  was  due 
exclusively  to  immigrant  Aryas  ;  and  that  of  Malayana,  primarily  to 
the  migratory  sequences  of  the  latter,  and  secondarily  to  the  Muslim 
Arabs. 

2.  That  the  most  superior  types  of  Monkeys  are  found  to  be 
indigenous  exactly  where  we  encounter  races  of  some  of  the  most 
inferior  types  of  Men. 

G.  R.  G. 

Philadelphia,  February,  1857. 


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651 


LIST   OP   SUBSCRIBERS. 


S.  Thayer  Abert,  Esq.,  "Washington,  D.  0. 

Adelphia  Club,  New  Orleans,  La. 

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Geo.  S.  D.  Anderson,  Esq.,  Alexandria.  La. 

Wm.  H.  Anderson,  M.  D.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

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William  Aspull,  Esq.,  London. 

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Mrs.  Goswin  Austin,  Chilworth  Manor,  Surrey,  Eng. 

Stephen  Austin,  Esq.,  Hertford,  Eng. 

♦Monsieur  D'Avezac,  Ministere  de  la  Marine,  Paris.6?1 

*Monsieur  Prisse  d'Avennes,  Paris. 

A.  Forster  Axson,  M.  D.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

Conrad  Baer,  Esq.,  Buffalo,  N.  T. 

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F.  A.  P.  Barnard,  LL.  D.,  Pres't  Univ.  Miss.,  Oxford, 

Miss. 
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Derbyshire,  Eng. 
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"W.  R.  Black,  Esq.,  Fairmount  Mills,  Philadelphia. 

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Samuel  Miller  Bond,  Esq.,  Darien,  Ga. 

Miss  Eliza  Bostock,  London. 

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H.  L.  Byrd,  M.  D.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

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William  Cadow,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 
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F.  M.  Cater,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 


6-27  n.B  — Tliose  gentlemen  whose  mimes  are  marked  with  an  asterisk  (")  liuve  materially  furthered  llie  scientific  i 
rests  of  this  work. 


652 


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New  York. 
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II.  A.  Deas,  Esq.,      fi 
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George  P.  Delaplaine,  Esq.,  Madison,  Wis. 
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Mons.  J.  Boucher  de  Perthes,  Abbeville,  France. 
-  H.  W.  De  Saussure,  M.  D.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 
Charles  Desilver,  Bookseller,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (6  c.) 
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D.  M.  Dewey,  Bookseller,  Rochester,  N.  Y.  (2  copies.) 


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Charles  D.  Dickey,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

Prof.  Samuel  Henry  Dickson,  M.D.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Charles  Edward  Dirmeyer,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

Geo.  W.  Dirmeyer,  M.  D.,  " 

Hon.  Nathan  F.  Dixon,  Westerly,  R.  I. 

James  Doherty,  Esq.,  Staten  Island,  N.  Y. 

Win.  B.  Donne.  Esq.,  London  Library  (2  copies). 

J.  Drysdale,  Esq.,  M.  D.,  Liverpool,  Eng. 

Lieut.  B.  Du  Barry,  U.S.A.,  Fort  Snelling,  Minnesota, 

Miss  Eliza  Duckworth,  Richmond  Hill,  Surrey,  Eng. 

R.  E.  Dudgeon,  Esq.,  M.  D.,  London. 

Monsieur  Benjamin  Duprat,  Paris. 

P.  S.  Duval,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Charles  J.  M.  Eaton,  Esq.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

George  N.  Eaton,  Esq.,  " 

Rollin  Eaton,  M.D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Jonas  Eberhardt,  Esq.,  Schuylkill  Falls,  Pa. 

Wm.  H.  Egle,  Esq.,  Harrisburg,  Pa. 

Monsier  Gustave  D'Eichthal,  Paris. 

The  R.  H.  the  Earl  of  Ellesmere,  K.G.,  F.R.  S.,  Eng. 

Albert  T.  Elliott,  Esq.,  Providence,  R.  I. 

Smith  Ely,  Esq.,  New  York. 

David  F.  Emery,  Esq.,  Newburyport,  Mass. 

Moses  H.  Emery,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

John  Evans,  Esq.,  Radnor,  Delaware  Co.,  Pa. 

Joseph  Evans,  Esq.,  Schuylkill  Falls,  Pa. 

Joshua  Evans,  Esq.,  Golden  Hill,  Hampstead,  Eng. 

William  Eynaud,  Esq.,  Island  of  Malta. 

John  Fagan,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

N.  Fejervary,  Esq.,  Davenport,  Iowa. 

Sir  Charles  Fellows,  F.R.S.,  London. 

John  J.  Field,  M.  D.,  London, 

Thos.  R.  Finlay,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

G.  W.  Fish,  Esq.,  Oglethorpe,  Ga. 

J.  R.  Fisher,  Esq.,  Richmond.  Ya. 

H.  I.  Fisk,  M.  D.,  Guilford,  Conn. 

Jules  A.  Florat,  Esq.,  New  Orleans.  La. 

Thos.  M.  Forman,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga, 

Prof.  Caleb  G.  Forshey,  Rutersville,  Texas. 

Wm.  Parker  Foulke,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa, 

S.  P.  Fowler,  Esq.,  Danvers  Port,  Mass. 

L.  A.  Frampton,  M.  D.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

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Isidor  Gerstenberg,  Esq.,  London. 

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John  Gliddon,  Esq.,  London. 
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Wm.  Grant,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 
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ALPHABETICAL    LIST     OF     SUBSCRIBERS. 


653 


J.  Allen  Green,  M.D.,  Columbia,  S.  C.  (2  copies.) 

Daniel  H.  Greene,  Esq.,  East  Greenwich,  R.  I. 

D,  S.  Greenbongh,  Esq.,  Boston,  Mass. 

W.  W.  Greenhough,  Esq.,  " 

John  Greenwood,  Jr.,  Esq.,  New  York. 

John  Grigg,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa, 

Geo.  Grote,  Esq.,  London. 

J.  H.  Gurney,  Esq.,  M.P.,  London. 

Lieut.  A.  W.  Habersham,  U.S.N.,  Navy  Yard,  Phila. 
Clamor  Fred.  Hagedorn,  Esq.,  Consul  Gen'l,  Philadel- 
phia, Pa. 
R.  K.  Haight,  Esq.,  New  York  (10  copies). 
Prof.  S.  S.  Haldernan.  A.M.,  Delaware  College. 
Salmon  C.  Hall,  Esq.,  "Washington,  D.  C. 
John  Halsey,  Esq.,  New  York  (3  copies). 
R.  W.  Hamilton,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 
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Alexander  Hart,  M.  D.,  New  Orleaos,  La. 
Charles  Hart,  Esq.,  Providence,  R.  I. 
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Willis  P.  Hazard,  Bookseller,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (5  c.) 
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J.  H.  Helm,  M.  D..  Eaton,  Preble  Co.,  Ohio. 
Thomas  Helm.  Esq.,  Philadelphia. 
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Bernard  Henry,  M.  D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
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Alexander  Herzen,  Esq.,  London. 
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Sir  Benjamin  Heywood,  Bart.,  Manchester,  Eng. 

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G.  S.  Hillard,  Esq.,  Boston,  Mass. 

Wm.  B.  Hodgson,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Professor  van  der  Hoeven,  Leyden,  Holland. 

Prof.  Jno.  Edw.  Holbrook,  M.  D.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Charles  Holland,  Esq.,  Pres't  Liverpool  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  Liverpool. 

J.  F.  Holland,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

F.  Hollick,  M.D.,  New  York. 

0.  W.  Holmes,  M.  D.,  Boston,  Mass. 

Philetus  H.  Holt,  Esq.,  New  York. 

Sidney  Homer,  Esq.,  Bostoo,  Mass. 

J.  J.  Hooks,  M.D.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

Hopkins.  Bridgman  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Northampton, 
Mass. 

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Henry  Horlbeck,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Leonard  Horner,  Esq.,  F.  R.  S  ,  London. 

Mrs.  LaviniaE.  A.  Howard.  Daphne,  Mobile  Bay  (2.) 

S.  S.  Howell,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 


Leon  Huchez,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

J.  A.  Huger,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

R.  W.  Hughes,  Esq.,  Richmond,  Va. 

Samuel  I.  Hull.  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Thomas  Hun,  M.  D.,  Albany,  N.  Y. 

Leigh  Hunt,  Esq.,  London. 

Prof.  Thos.  Hunt,  M.  D.,  Univ.  of  La.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

T.  C.  Hunt,  Esq..  Natchitoches,  La. 

Ariel  Hunton.  Esq.,  Hyde  Park,  Lamoille  Co.,  Vt. 

A.  H.  Hutchinson,  Esq.,  Bladen  Springs,  Ala. 

W.  M.  Hutton,  Esq.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

W.  Ivory,  Esq.,  Edinburgh. 

Samuel  Jackson,  M.D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Henry  Jacobs,  Esq.,  Providence,  R.  I. 

N.  R.  Jennings,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

Edward  Johnson,  Bookseller,  Alexandria,  La.  (6  c.) 

F.  Johnson,  M.D.,  Natchitoches,  La. 
Alexander  Johnston,  Esq.,  Baltimore,  Md. 
^Monsieur  Jomard,  Pres.  de  la  Soc.  de  Geog.,  Paris. 
George  Jones,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Geo.  N.  Jones,  M.  D.,  Savannah,  Gn. 

G.  R.  Jones,  M.  D.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

Prof.  James  Jones,  M.D.,  Univ.  of  La.,  New  Orleans. 
W.  Jones,  Esq.,  Riceboro,  Ga. 

Henry  K.  Kalussowski,  M.  D.,  Washington,  D.C. 
Robt.  E.  Kelly,  Esq.,  Versailles,  France  (2  copies). 
L.  C.  Kennedy,  Esq.,  Spartanburgh,  S.  C. 
James  Kennedy,  A.M.,  M.D.,  New  York. 
Edward  M.  Kern,  Esq.,  U.  S.  N.  Pacific  Explor.  Exped., 

Washington,  D.C. 
M.  M.  C.  King,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 
Hon.  Judge  Mitchell  King,  Charleston,  S.  C. 
Wm.  F.  Kintzing,  Esq.,  Philadelphia. 
Stephen  D.  Kirk,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 
F.  Klincksieck,  Esq.,  Paris  (2  copies). 
Charles  Kochersperger,  Esq.,  Philadelphia. 
P.  M.  Kollock,  M.D.,  Savannah,  Ga. 
Louis  Kossuth,  London. 

Miss  Lace,  Beaconsfield,  Liverpool,  Eng. 

Mrs.  Laing,  Edinburgh. 

Abbate  Michelangelo  Lanci,  Prof.  LL.  00.,  Rome. 

W.  G.  Langdon,  Esq.,  Glasgow. 

F.  Lanneau,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  0. 

The  R.  II.  the  Marquis  of  Lansdowne,  K.  G.,  F.  R.  S., 

Eng.  (2  copies.) 
H.  A.  Lantz,  Bookseller,  Reading,  Pa.  (3  copies.) 
Henry  Laurence,  Esq.,  Yazoo  City,  Miss. 
Samuel  Laurence,  Esq.,  New  York. 
Leavitt  &  Allen,  Booksellers,  New  York  (4  copies). 
Robt.  Lebby,  M.D.,  Charleston,  S.C. 
Charles  Le  Cesne,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 
Victor  Le  Cesne,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 
John  L.  Le  Conte,  M.  D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
The  R.  Rev.  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Manchester  (Dr.  Lee), 

Eng. 
Prof.  Joseph  Leidy,  M.D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
*Monsieur   Lemercier,   Biblioth.  Mus.  d'Hist.  Nat., 

Paris. 
*Chevalier  R.  Lepsius,  Berlin. 
J.  P.  Lesley,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Geo.  H.  Levis,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
J.  C.  Levy,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 
S.  Yates  Levy,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 
Elisha  H.  Lewie,  M.  D..  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Saunders  Lewis,  Esq.,  Montgomery  Co.,  Pa. 


654 


ALPHABETICAL     LIST     OF     SUBSCRIBERS. 


Library  of  the  Colonial  Department,  London. 

Library  Company  of  Philadelphia. 

Library  of  the  Society  of  Writers  to  H.  M.  Signet, 

Edinburgh. 
Lord  Lindsay  and  Balcarres,  Colinsburgh,  Fifeshire, 

Scotland. 
Adolphus  Lippe,  M.D.,  Philadelphia. 
Livermore  &  Rudd,  Booksellers,  New  York  (3  copies). 
Kobt.  S.  Liviugston,  Esq.,  New  York. 
Edward  Lloyd,  Jr.,  Esq.,  Manchester,  Eng. 
Charles  A.  Locke,  Esq.,  Boston,  Mass. 
Lord  Londesborough,  K.  C.  II.,  F.  R.  S.,  Eng. 
Andrew  Low,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 
Henry  A.  Lowe,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 
Hermann  E.  Ludewig,  Esq.,  New  York. 
John  Luff,  Esq.,  New  Orleans. 
J.  L.  Brown  Lundin,  M.  D.,  Camp,  Crimea. 
H.  M.  Lusher.  Esq.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 
Mrs.  Lushington,  London. 
Lt.-Col.  Lyell,  Hon.  E.  Ind.  C.  S.,  London. 
Sir  Charles  Lyell,  F.R.  S..  London. 

Wm.  Mackay,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

*K.  R.  H.  Mackenzie,  Esq.,  F.S.  A.,  M.R.  A.S.,  Lond. 

Charles  Maclaren,  Esq.,  Edinburgh. 

Charles  Magarge,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

James  Magee,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

W.  G.  Malin,  Esq.,  for  Library  of  Penn  Hosp.,  Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

Mrs.  Mallet,  Belmont,  Hampstead,  Eng. 

J.  C  Mausel,  Esq.,  Blandford,  Dorset,  Eng. 

Wm.  B.  Mardre,  Esq.,  Windsor,  N.  C. 

♦Monsieur  A.  Mariette,  Conserv.  Musfie  du  Louvre, 
Paris. 

J.  H.  Markland,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Francis  Markoe,  Esq.,  State  Department,  Washington, 
D.  C. 

Wm.  T.  Marshall,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

F.  Mars,  M.  D.,  Richmond,  Va. 

Prof.  L.  Q.  Mathews,  Lynchburg  College,  Lynchburg, 
Va. 

G.  M.  B.  Maughs,  M.  D.,  Fulton,  Mo. 
James  Maury,  Esq..  New  Orleans,  La, 
B.  F.  May,  M.D.,  McKinley,  Ala. 

H.  R.  May,  Esq.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

Joseph  Mayer,  Esq.,  F.  S.  A.,  Liverpool,  Eng. 

A.  H.  Mazyck,  Jr.,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Alex.  McAndrew,  Esq.,  New  York. 

Wm.  McCabe,  Esq.,  Whitby,  C.  W. 

Hon.  Judge  Theo.  H.  McCaleh,  New  Orleans,  La. 

J.  H.  B.  McCIellan,  M.D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

J.  H.  McCullob,  M.D.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

R.  R.  McDonald,  Esq.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

R.  S.  McDow,  Esq.,  Liberty  Hill,  S.  C. 

Thos.  F.  McDow,  Esq.,        " 

McDowell  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Steubenville,  0  (2  c.) 

A.  M.  Mclver,  Esq.,  Riceboro,  Ga. 

John  McKee,  Sr.,  Esq.,  Chester  C.  H.,  S.  C. 

John  McKee,  Jr.,  Bookseller,  Chester  C.  H..  S.  C.  (5) 

P.  B.  McKelvey,  M.D.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

F.  E.  McKenzie,  Esq..  Charleston,  S.  C. 

M.  C.  McKing,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Hon.  Lewis  McLane,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Middleton  &  McMaster,  Booksellers,  Mobile,  Ala.  (25) 

Sir  John  McNeil,  G.  C.  B.,  F.  R.  S.,  Edinburgh. 

Colin  McRea,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

James  McSberry,  Esq  ,  Frederick,  Md. 

Mercantile  Library,  Baltimore,  Md. 


A.  P.  Merrill.  M.D.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 
Minor  Merriwether,  C.  E.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 
Prof.  John  Millington,  Memphis,  Tenn. 
Charles  S.  Mills,  M.D.,  Richmond,  Va. 
Clark  Mills,  Esq.,  Washington,  D.  C. 
Chas.  Millspaugh,  Esq.,  St.  Louis,  Mo. 

The  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  (Dr.  H.  H.  Milman),  Eng. 

J.  B.  Mitchell,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

M.  Monro,  Esq.,  London. 

Jno.  W.  Moore,  Bookseller,  Philadelphia  (2  copies). 

Thos.  Moore,  Esq.,  Schuylkill  Falls,  Pa. 

Thos.  H.  Morris,  Esq.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Prof.  W.  B.  Morrow,  M.D.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

P.  A.  Morse,  Esq.,  New  Orleans. 

Robt.  P.  Morton,  Esq.,  Germantown,  Pa. 

Mrs.  Samuel  George  Morton,  Germantown,  Pa. 

Thos.  Geo.  Morton,  M.D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Alex.  Moseley,  Esq.,  Richmond,  Va. 

J.  M.  Moss  &  Bro.,  Booksellers,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (5) 

Prof.  James  Moultrie,  M.  D.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Wm.  Mure,  Esq.,  H.B.M.  Consul,  New  Orleans. 

Dr.  Max  Miiller,  Taylorian  Professor,  Oxford,  Eng. 

Jennings  Murphy,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala.  (2  copies.) 

The  H.  Lord  Murray,  Edinburgh. 

G.  A.  Myers,  Esq.,  Richmond,  Va. 

W.  II.  Myers,  Esq.,  Loudonville,  0. 

W.  Nelson,  Esq.,  Edinburgh. 
Alexander  Nesbitt,  Esq.,  London. 
J.  West  Nevins,  Esq.,  New  York. 
New  Orleans  Club,  per  R.  H.  Chilton,  Esq.,  New  Or- 
leans. 
J.  P.  Nichol,  Esq.,  Prof,  of  Astronomy,  Glasgow  (2). 
Miss  Nightingale,  Embley,  Hants,  Eng. 

B.  M.  Norman,  Bookseller,  New  Orleans,  La.  (10  c.) 
Edwin  Norris,  Esq.,  F.R.S.,  F.R.A.S-,  London. 
Prof.  Gustavus  A.  Nott,  M.  D.,  XJniv.  of  La.,  New  Or- 
leans. 

Robert  W.  Ogden,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 
Samuel  Ogdin,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Jno.  W.  O'Neill,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Edward  Padelford,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

W.  B.  Page,  M.  D.,  Philadelphia. 

I.  II.  &  John  Parke;-,  Booksellers,  Oxford,  Eng.  (3  c.) 

Parry  &  M'Millau,  Booksellers,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (10) 

Edward  Patterson,  Esq.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Robert  Patterson,  Esq.,  U.  S.  Mint,  Philadelphia. 

Geo.  Pattison  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Memphis,  Tenn,  (5) 

Monsieur  G.  Pauthier,  Paris. 

Abraham  Payne,  Esq.,  Providence,  R.  I. 

St.  George  Peachy,  Esq.,  Richmond,  Va. 

Miss  Mary  Pearsall,  Germantown,  Pa. 

Jno.  Penington  &  Son,  Booksellers,  Philadelphia  (5). 

Hanson  Penn,  M.D.,  Bladensburg,  Md. 

Penn  Mutual  Insurance  Co.,  Philadelphia. 

J.  Pennington,  Esq.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Hon.  John  Perkins,  Jr.,  Ashwood,  La. 

E.  W.  Perry,  Esq.,  Richmond,  Va. 

Thomas  M.  Peters,  Esq.,  Moulton,  Ala. 

R.  E.  Peterson,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

T.  B.  Peterson,  Bookseller,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (10  c.) 

Gen.  Rohles  Pezuela,  Mexican  Minister,  Washington, 

D.  C. 
J.  G.  Phillimore,  Esq.,  M.  P.,  London. 
Hon.  Henry  M.  Phillips,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
James  Phillips,  Esq.,  Washington,  D.  C. 
Wm.  W.  L.  Phillips,  Esq.,  Trenton,  N.  J. 


ALPHABETICAL     LIST     OF     SUBSCRIBERS. 


655 


Phinney  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Buffalo,  N.  Y.  (10  copies.) 

Martin  Pickett,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

Hon.  Albert  Pike,  Little  Rock,  Ark. 

James  Pilians,  Esq.,  Prof,  of  Humanity,  Edinburgh. 

John  Pitman,  M.D.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

J.  N.  Piatt,  Esq.,  New  York. 

George  Poe,  Esq.,  Georgetown,  D.  C. 

Geo.  F.  Pollard,  M.D.,  Montgomery,  Ala. 

M.  Polock,  Bookseller,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (2  copies.) 

William  0.  Pond,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

James  Potter,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Philip  Poullain,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Geo. 

Thomas  II.  Powers,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

"William  S.  Price,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Providence  Athenasum.  Providence,  R.  I. 

Public  Library,  Boston,  Mass. 

Isaac  Pugh,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

G.  P.  Putman  &  Co.,  Publishers,  New  York  (20  c.) 

John  Raig,  Esq..  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

B.  Howard  Rand,  M.  D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Randall  &  Williams,  Booksellers,  Mobile,  Ala,  (10  c.) 
Rev.  Wm.  Porter  Ray.  Lafayette,  Ind. 

James  B.  Read,  M.  D.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

J.  Rehn,  Esq..  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

John  K.  Reid,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

A.  R.  Reinagle,  Esq.,  Oxford,  England. 

*Monsieur  Ernest  Renan,  Biblioth.  Imp.,  Paris. 

Wm.  Rhett,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

A.  Henry  Rhind,  Esq.,  Sibster,  near  Wick,  N.  B. 

R.  C.  Richardson,  M.  D.,  Natchitoches,  La. 

Prof.  John  Leonard  Riddell,  M.D.,  Univ.  of  La.,  New 

Orleaus. 
Geo.  W.  Riggs,  Esq.,  Washington,  D.  C. 
Rising  Star  Groupe,  Greenville,  0. 
W.  Lea  Roberts,  Esq.,  New  York. 
F.  M.  Robertson,  M.  D.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 
Hon.  Judge  Jno.  B.  Robertson,  New  Orleans,  La.  (2) 
T.  G.  Robertson,  Bookseller,  Hagerstown,  Md.  (3  c.) 
H,  Robinson,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

C.  M.  Robison,  Esq.,  London. 

Thomas  W.  Robison,  Esq.,  Kingston,  C.  W. 

Col.  W.  S.  Rockwell,  Milledgeville,  Ga. 

Wm.  B.  Rodman,  Esq.,  Washington,  N.  C. 

John  Rodgers,  Esq.,  U.  S.  N.,  Washington,  D.  C. 

George  Rogers,  Esq.,  M.  D.,  Clifton,  Bristol,  Eng. 

Prof.  Henry  D.  Rogers,  Boston,  Mass. 

Edward  Romilly,  Esq.,  Audit.  Office,  London. 

Howell  Rose,  Esq.,  Wetumpka,  Ala. 

Andrew  M.  Ross.  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Dr.  R.  Roth,  Prof,  of  Sanscrit,  Canterbury,  Eng. 

James  Rush,  M.  D.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Mrs.  James  Rush,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Russell  &.  Jones,  Booksellers,  Charleston,  S.  C.  (25  c.) 

J.  Rutherford  Russell,  Esq.,  M.  D.,  Leamington,  Eng. 

(2  copies.) 
Charles  Ryan,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
The  R.  H.  Sir  Edward  Ryan,  Kensington,  Eng.  (2  c.) 

Jose  Salazar,  Esq.,  Mexico. 

*Monsieur  Aug.  Salzmann,  Paris. 

W.  S.  Sargenson,  Esq.,  Pall  Mall,  London. 

B.  F.  Shaw,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Philip  T.  Schley,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Howard  Schott,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Rudolph  Schramm,  Esq.,  London. 

Mrs.  Salis  Schwabe,  Manchester,  Eng.  (2  copies.) 

H.  W.  Schwartz,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 


Charles  Scott,  Esq.,  Trentoo,  N.  J. 

Thomas  J.  Scott,  Esq.,  Montgomery,  Ala. 

W.  E.  Screven,  Esq.,  Riceboro,  Ga. 

Alexander  S.  Semmes,  M.  D.,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Prof.  George  Sexton,  M.  P.,  Lambeth,  Eng. 

Lemuel  Shattuck,  Esq.,  Boston,  Mass. 

J.  W.  Shepherd,  Esq.,  Montgomery,  Ala. 

Charles  Sherry,  Jr.,  Esq.,  Bristol,  R.  I. 

Miss  Lydia  Shore,  Meersbrook,  near  Sheffield,  Eng. 

Nathl.  B.  Shurtleff,  M.  D-,  Boston,  Mass. 

E.  H.  Sievelling,  Esq.,  M.  D.,  London. 

Franc.  Simenez,  Esq.,  Mexico. 

W.  Gilmore  Simms,  Esq.,  Woodlands,  S.  C. 

C.  TT.  Slater,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
John  Slavens.  Esq.,  Portland  Mills,  Ind. 
L.  Slusser,  M.  D.,  Canal  Fulton,  0. 

J.  C.  Small,  Esq.,  Toronto,  C.  W. 
J.  S.  Small,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

D.  S.  Smalley,  Esq.,  West  Roxbury,  Mass. 
A.  A.  Smets,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Smith,  English  &,  Co.,  Booksellers,  Philadelphia  (5). 

David  C.  Smith,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Howard  Smith,  M.  D.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

J.  B.  Smith,  Esq.,  M.  P.,  London. 

J.  Gay  Smith,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

John  Smith,  Esq.,  Wilkesbarre,  Pa. 

Joseph  P.  Smith,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Lloyd  P.  Smith,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Stark.  B.  Smith,  M.  D.,  Windsor,  N.  C. 

Madame  Smyth,  London. 

Jas.  Solly,  Esq.,  Toll  End,  Tipton,  Eng. 

Mrs.  Speir,  London. 

Osborn  Springfield,  Esq.,Catton,  near  Norwich,  Eng 

Hon.  E.  Geo.  Squier,  Fonseca,  Honduras. 

Thomas  Jefferson  Staley,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

T.  0.  Stark,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La, 

Holmes  Steele,  M.  D.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

Albert  Steiu,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

Lewis  H.  Steiner,  M.  D.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

John  Stoddard,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

*M.  le    Dr.   Here.   Straus-Durckheim,   Jardin    des 

Plantes,  Paris. 
Stringer  &  Townsend,  Booksellers,  New  York  (10  c.) 
T.  W.  Strong,  Esq.,  New  York. 
George  Sutton,  M.D.,  Aurora,  Ind. 
Samuel  Swan,  Esq.,  Montgomery,  Ala. 
J.  A.  Symonds,  Esq.,  M.  D.,  Clifton,  Bristol,  Eng. 

Rev.  Edward  Taggart,  Wildwood,  Hampstead,  Eng. 

Benjamin  Tanner,  Esq.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Rev.  John  James  Tayler,  LondOD. 

A.  K.  Taylor,  Esq.,  Memphis,  Tenn. 

Franck  Taylor,  Bookseller,  Washington,  D.  C.  (10  e.) 

Henry  Taylor,  Bookseller,  Baltimore,  Md.  (25  copies.) 

J.  K.  Tefft,  Esq.,  Savannah,  Ga. 

W.  H.  Tegarden.  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 

J.  C.  Thompson,  Esq.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

Samuel  Thompson,  M.  D.,  Albion,  HI. 

John  Thorn,  M.  D.,  Baltimore,  Md. 

Ticknor  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Boston,  Mass.  (12  copies.) 

Alexander  Tod,  Esq.,  Egypt. 

Hon.  R.  Toombs,  U.  S.  SeDate,  Washington,  D.  C. 

D.  Torrey,  Esq.,  Davenport,  Iowa. 

H.  R.  Troup,  M.  D.,  Darien,  Ga. 

D.  H.  Tucker,  M.  D.,  Richmond,  Ya. 

J.  C.  Turner,  Dr.  D.  S.,  Mobile,  Ala. 

T.  I.  Turner,  M.D.,  U.S.N.,  Philadelphia,  Pa, 

Prof  Wm.  W.  Turner,  Washington,  D.  C. 


656 


ALPHABETICAL     LIST    OF     SUBSCRIBERS. 


J.  Knight  Uhler,  M.  B.,  Schuylkill  Falls,  Pa. 
Wm.  M.  Uhler,  M.  B.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
J.  E.  Ulhorn,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 
Wilkins  Updike,  Esq.,  Kingston,  R.  I. 

Prof.  Gilb.  S.  Yance,  M.  B.,  Univ.  of  La.,  New  Orleans. 
Henry  Yanderlinder,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 
"William  S.  Yaux,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

F.  F.  Walgamuth,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Sir  Joshua  Walmsley,  M.  P.,  London. 

J.  Mason  Warren,  M.  B.,  Boston,  Mass. 

James  S.  Waters,  Bookseller,  Baltimore,  Md.  (10  c.) 

A.  I.  Watson,  Esq.,  U.  S.  N.,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Hewett  C.  Watson,  Esq.,  Thames  Ditton,  Surrey,  Eng. 

John  G.  Wayt,  M.B.,  Richmond,  Ya, 

Thomas  H.  Webb,  M.  D.,  Boston,  Mass. 

Prof.  J.  C.  P.  Wederstrandt,  M.B.,  Univ.  of  La.,  New 

Orleans. 
Wm.  Weightman,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
J.  R.  Welsh,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Mrs.  C.  E.  Weyman,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 
Wm.  W.  Wbite,  Esq.,  Concrete,  Texas. 
James  S.  Wbitney,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Jacob  B.  Wbittemore,  M.B.,  Chester.  N.  H. 
Morris  S.  Wickersham,  Esq.,  Philadelphia.  Pa. 
Prof.  George  B.  Wilber,  M.  D.,  Mineral  Point,  Wis. 
W.  C.  Wilde,  Esq.,  New  Orleans,  La. 


Wiley  &  Halsted,  Booksellers,  New  York  (12  copies). 

Wm.  Wilkins,  Esq.,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

Robt.  B.  Wilkinson,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

W.  A.  Wilkinson,  Esq.,  M.  P.,  London. 

Mark  W7ilJcox,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

G.  Clinton  Williams,  Esq.,  Washington,  B.C. 

W.  Thorne  Williams,  Bookseller,  Savannah,  Ga.  (25) 

Prof.  Bank  Wilson,  LL.B.,Univ.  Coll.,  Toronto,  C.  W. 

Thos.  B.  Wilson,  M.  B.,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (2  copies.) 

Wm.  Winthrop,  Esq.,  Lcndon. 

lion.  W.  H.  W7itte,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (2  copies.) 

Francis  Wood,  Esq.,  New  Orleans. 

Prof,  Geo.  B.  WTood,  M.  B.,  Philadelphia. 

H.  B.  Woodfall,  Esq.,  London. 

James  Woodhouse  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Richmond,  Ya 

(10  copies.) 
S.  W.  Woodhouse,  M.  B.,  Fort  Belaware,  Bel. 
J.  J.  Woodward,  Esq.,  West  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
S.  M.  Woolston,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 
Thos.  H.  Wynne,  Esq.,  Richmond,  Ya. 

J.  A.  Yates,  Esq.,  London. 

James  Yates,  Esq.,  M.  A.,  F.  R.  S.,  Highgate,  Eng. 

The  Misses  Yates,  Liverpool,  Eog. 

Richard  V.  Yates,  Esq.,  Liverpool,  Eng. 

Easton  Yonge,  M.B.,  Savannah,  G a. 

W.  B.  Zeiber,  Bookseller,  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (5  copies.) 


ADDITIONAL    NAMES. 

Andrew  H.  Armour  &  Co.,  Booksellers,  Toronto,  C.  W.  (4  copies.) 

Charles  A.  Brown,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Thomas  Hartley,  Esq.,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

Henry  Steegman,  Esq.,  New  York. 

R.  M.  Smith,  M.B.,  Athens,  Ga.  (2  copies.) 


THE     END. 


N 


LE  A?  '09 


1 

Date  Due 

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$ 

9 

PRINTED 

IN  U.  S.  A. 

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